It was the year of the O.J. Simpson trial, of the pope’s visit to Baltimore and of news the Cleveland Browns were moving to town that a young Army sergeant began a mail route on the city’s western boundary.
Her route was hilly and required six hours — 329 stops, including two churches. More senior mail carriers had taken the shorter routes. That left JoAnn Dowery with the neighborhoods of Ten Hills and Westgate and a stretch of Baltimore National Pike.
She didn’t mind. The historic, leafy streets offered a pleasant walk. Families came to their front doors to welcome her. On the hottest days, they left her drinks in buckets of ice. Dowery found the work satisfying; delivering the mail was regimented like the Army.
She kept the mail route for another year — then, for another 29 years.
