Customers honor kind mailman with garden, scholarship fund
MARK BROWN markbrown@suntimes.com June 28, 2011 10:32PM
Neighbors built a memorial mailbox on the corner of Byron and Claremont, in Chicago, in honor of their late mailman Mike Martinez. Letter carrier Erica Fleming, a friend and co-worker of Martinez stops by to see the memorial on June 28, 2011. l Keith Hale~Sun-Times
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Updated: October 4, 2011 12:35AM
Mike Martinez must have been a heckuva mailman.
His former customers will tell you he was certainly that, but more importantly, they say, he was a heckuva nice guy who knew everyone on his route by name and always greeted them with a smile, a wave and some friendly chitchat.
He was the kind of mailman who would warn them if they’d forgotten to move their cars on street-sweeping day, search the post office on his weekend off day for their missing package or stop by their homes after work for a beer or a barbecue.
Martinez was such an unforgettable character, in fact, that some of those customers built a memorial garden in his honor at the southwest corner of Claremont and Byron — and dedicated it over the weekend at their annual block party.
I’ve never seen anything quite like “Mike’s Corner,” certainly not for a mailman. Neither had Martinez’s co-workers at the post office, many of whom attended the ceremony to express their appreciation both for Martinez and for the people who so kindly recognized him.
“It really makes you step up your game,” said mail carrier Tamme Price as she worked his old route Tuesday.
The garden consists of an exquisitely landscaped corner parkway plot with a small stone monument topped by an old-fashioned flag mailbox and a plaque designed to look like a letter. The letter to Mike T. Martinez Jr. carries a return address of “Rest in Peace 1959-2010.”
It was a year ago next month that Martinez, 50, died in his sleep at home, shocking the St. Ben’s neighbors who had come to think of him as a family friend during his 20 years on the route.
Everybody wanted to know what they could do, and somebody came up with the idea of a memorial garden. Through the North Center Neighborhood Association, they spread the word and raised some money. Dane Caswell, a landscape architect who lives on the route, did the work.
There was enough money left over that a scholarship fund was started in Martinez’s honor at the Neighborhood Boys & Girls Club, where the postman had become a volunteer after years of delivering its mail.
I heard lots of Martinez stories as I walked the neighborhood Tuesday and even more later via email when the local grapevine got word of my interest.
I heard from Tom Lutz, who suffered a stroke one year, and afterward Martinez would ring him up and ask him to help deliver the mail to his neighbors as part of his rehab.
“He would encourage me to try a little harder each day, as my bad leg would get better little by little,” Lutz said.
I heard about how Martinez had agreed to chaperone a birthday party for a neighborhood kid who was insistent that he didn’t want his mother to do it. Martinez knew all the kids’ names. The dogs, too.
I also heard about how he was often among the last to leave the block party. Mike Martinez, everyone agreed, was a guy who knew how to have fun.
But his lasting legacy is a simple one: You don’t need to have a big-shot job to leave your mark in this world. All it takes is a warm smile, an upbeat attitude and a kind heart.
The proof is right there on Mike’s Corner.
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