The U.S. Postal Service has a term for when the independent federal agency cannot sort or deliver a piece of mail due to an incorrect, illegible or insufficient address: a “nixie.” The same term could apply to Albert Goldman, the Jewish New York postmaster in the 1930s and 1940s, who in many ways foreshadowed social-media “influencers” of today and, in other ways, particularly his personal faith and motivations, proved to be ANK, “address not known.”
The day after Goldman died on May 5, 1967, The New York Times reminded readers that it called the late postmaster “most friendly, helpful and accommodating” when he retired in 1952, after more than 25 years in public office. “No worthy cause in this city has ever had to ring twice to enlist the enthusiastic support of Albert Goldman,” it added.
The Times recorded that Goldman, a “baldish, stout man, talkative, cheerful and energetic” who died at 84 of a stroke after a two-month illness, was most proud of supervising “4,000 Army and Navy postal units at home and abroad in World War II.” That corresponded with “the largest wartime mail volume handled anywhere” and earned him a Medal of Merit, the Times said.
As the Times put it in December 1947, Goldman was the “father of the Santa Claus fund.” TIME recorded in 1941 that Goldman was “official opener of letters-to-Santa Claus.” (One letter Goldman read that year, per the magazine, said: “You better bring all this stuff, or I’ll beat you to a pulp.”)
