SOUTH HADLEY — Within the first few minutes of Robert Mandeville’s arrival at Loomis Village each day, 30 to 40 seniors crowd into the mailroom to chat with “Bob the Mailman.”

“They (Loomis Village residents) don’t have visitors coming in all the time, but the mailman is going to be there,” South Hadley Postmaster Myra Morgan said. “Sometimes I’m like, ‘Bob, you know, you stay too long and it takes too long, but when you go down and see him, you understand why it takes so long, because everybody’s going to talk to Bob the mailman.”

Just a few streets away from Mandeville, Nathan Strom walks around South Hadley Falls, delivering every letter, package and bill on foot for more than 600 units. He lived on the same streets growing up in South Hadley, and remembers greeting his mail carrier every morning. Now, the shoe is on the other foot.

“He’s a veteran, and he’s had shoulder problems, and two knee surgeries, and his route is all walking,” Morgan said. “I mean, he’s always here, hurt, sore, he’s here. He’s dedicated, and he’s doing the job.”

These two men have spent over 25 years on their routes, visiting the same houses and seeing the same faces in the windows or out on the yard or waiting at the mailbox. Over time, they’ve watched those faces change: Children sprout up and grow facial hair, new cars park in the driveway and the mail eventually slows as teens leave the nest. Eventually, Strom notes, those children have their own families.

Between capricious New England weather, the drastic rise in package orders to deliver and even attacks by dogs, the Postal Service is difficult work. But both Strom and Mandeville say the relationships they’ve developed along their routes makes all those snowy days without heat and summer heat waves without air conditioning in the truck worth it.

“You could become part of the community, your neighborhoods — they look out for you and we look after them,” Mandeville said.

Mandeville fell into job as a carrier with the post office after his dreams of working as a chef were dashed by the recession after the first Gulf War. With a child at home, he began frantically applying for jobs to supplement his part-time work in restaurants. The U.S. Post Office was the first company to respond. Mandeville spent two years delivering mail in Monson before moving to South Hadley.

“I was so unprepared, and if I didn’t have a little baby, I would have quit this job 30 years ago,” Mandeville said. “I started in November and it snowed every day I worked. So it was not funny, but you had to stick it out. You had to do what you had to do.”

Strom applied to the post office at the suggestion of his mail carrier, who he followed around the block as a kid because the job “was like the greatest thing in the world.”

“When I got out of high school, he said, ‘Nate, you should take the postal exam.’ And I thought, oh, we’ll see,” Strom explained. “I went into the military, got out, had a couple jobs, and finally I thought you know what? I’m going to take the postal exam.”

Both carriers began delivering mail in South Hadley in 1996, but they didn’t start out as the stars of the neighborhood. The hours were inconsistent and every day was a new route. Mandeville said he would tag along with a full-time carriers, dropping off mail previously hand-sorted by address to an unknown neighborhood. But once he and Strom became regulars with their own routes, they began to settle into a routine they enjoyed.

“I’m in this office for two hours, or, you know, an hour and a half, and then I’m out in the mail truck and I’m interacting with the community and people,” Mandeville said. “You just go and do your job, be safe and call it a day.”

Morgan said that the carriers have been at the South Hadley Post Office for so long that new hires look to them as mentors. Mandeville started as a carrier in his late teens, so Morgan thinks the younger employees relate to him, and they seek him out constantly for advice.

“He’s more caring to the younger employees, which is good. He talks to them like, ‘You just started post office, you need to invest in a 401(k),’” Morgan said. “He’s like, a mentor without being an (official) mentor.”

Nate, on the other hand, helps out every employee, even Morgan. She remembers her first day at the South Hadley office as rough, so Nate reached out to her and provided support and reassurance. It was his generosity, Morgan said, that made the transition to her job much easier.

“If I could get just a couple people to be like him, just imagine how different this office will be, just because you don’t get that dedication like that,” she said. “He’s the most kind-hearted person. He’ll help anybody, and he don’t have to, because he’s like this senior guy.”

Mail not only brings a level of social interaction, but it signifies larger stories. When Mandeville’s granddaughter requested mail for her fifth birthday, the neighbors on Mandeville’s route supported Brittney — who was battling cancer at the time —by sending her letters and spreading the word. And did word spread: Mandeville said so many letters came in for his granddaughter, she had her own bin in the office for 4,600 letters from all 50 states and 14 different countries.

“Brittney was an amazing little girl and the people on my route really came out and showed so much love and support. It truly renewed my faith in humanity,” he said.

However, not every story is cheerful. Strom calls the Postal Service “the second set of eyes, besides the police” in the neighborhood. Carriers notice when someone who picks up their mail every day has let letters pile up, when doors that are always closed are slightly ajar, or if a car isn’t in the driveway. More than once, Strom said, he’s found a deceased person.

“I’ve called the police numerous times because something just didn’t seem right,” he said.

Despite their nearly 30 years each in the Postal Service, the most challenging part of both men’s careers was the fairly recent global pandemic. Not only did their workload increase as residents stuck at home relied on mail for food and essentials, but carriers could also spread the coronavirus to the neighborhood. Mandeville took his role as carrier to Loomis Village very seriously, consistently sanitizing and masking throughout the day.

“That’s a lot of people really just started ordering paper towels, toilet paper, everything, because there was a shortage,” Strom said. “They stuck with that too. It’s like, this is convenient.”

A 10-package day was once a heavy delivery day, but Strom said that’s quadrupled. It’s a lot more work, but with difficult challenges comes more appreciation for overcoming them.

“I mean, people on my route, they were putting signs up saying, thank you, USPS, Amazon, FedEx,” Strom said. “People would come up with waters, you know, leave us food, you know, like candy bars, anything that just to show a sense of appreciation.”

Emilee Klein can be reached at eklein@gazettenet.com.