Expectant Letter Carrier Walks Toward Her Biggest Delivery

Minette Sheller delivers the mail 475 times a day in Reseda. Nineteen days from now, she hopes to deliver the male.

“I’d like a boy,” the postal carrier confided to Vanowen Street resident Sam Silver as she handed over his mail during her final neighborhood rounds Thursday. “I’ve got a girl already. But, as long as it’s healthy, I don’t care what it is.”

For months, patrons along Sheller’s eight-mile route have watched her grow into the role of expectant mother. Through it all, she has continued walking her residential and business-district route without so much as a pregnant pause.

“At first, people on my route just thought I was getting fat,” she said. “They’d beat around the bush before asking me if I was putting on a little weight. Then I borrowed one of the big guys’ uniform shirts to wear, and it became pretty obvious.”

Help From Co-Workers

The 29-year-old Sheller met her mail delivery schedule with the blessing of her doctor and the backing of Reseda postal officials. Co-workers helped with heavy parcels; part of the route was temporarily reassigned to another carrier during hot weather.

Sheller said she decided to work as long as possible so that she would be in the best physical and fiscal shape for her predicted Aug. 7 delivery. After that, she will have four months of paid maternity and sick leave to stay home with the baby and her 7-year-old daughter.

She said her boyfriend “hasn’t been real happy” about her continuing to walk a route bordered by Shirley and Vanalden avenues and Kittridge and Vanowen streets. “He’s worried about dogs and about me slipping going up and down porch steps. I can’t see over my stomach.”

Along Tampa Avenue, homemaker Betty Murphy waited in front of her house to save Sheller the trip up to her front door Thursday. At the side of the house, her loudly barking dog was safely behind a side-yard fence.

“Oh, you look so cute,” Murphy told the 5-foot, 3-inch Sheller. “You’re going to have a nice baby.”

A Hug and an Admonition

Further down the street, businessman Leonard Brooks handed her a wrapped baby gift and offered his workers’ best wishes.

At the last house on her route, Archwood Street resident Bill Bramley gave her a hug and a request to “bring the baby by.”

Reseda Postmaster Joe Bilotta said that about a third of his 66 carriers are women. Pregnant carriers occasionally elect to work late into their pregnancies.

He said Sheller will work the next two weeks as an inside clerk at the post office. When she returns from her leave, the veteran of nine years of letter carrying will go back to her old route, he said.