Countywide : Oath Taken by 7 New Postmasters

Raising their hands and repeating the same oath uttered by new U.S. presidents, seven Orange County postmasters were sworn in Wednesday to fill an office that has been held by the likes of Mark Twain, Ben Franklin and Abraham Lincoln.

The four men and three women will oversee a combined 1,900 employees who deliver more than 2.13 million pieces of mail each day to more than 307,000 addresses. They are filling posts left vacant by the U.S. Postal Service’s recent restructuring.

The new postmasters will serve the cities of Anaheim, Lake Forest, Huntington Beach, Newport Beach, San Clemente, Santa Ana and Silverado. Every U.S. city has a postmaster.

Santa Ana’s new postmaster, Rosemarie Fernandez, became the first woman to hold that post since its creation 123 years ago. Fernandez, a 16-year veteran of the Postal Service, said the wave of new appointments signals more than just a change in names and titles.

“In my experience, in the past we’ve sort of said to the public, this is what we have got, this is what we offer, like it or not,” said Fernandez, who takes over the largest operation of the seven new appointees. “Now that’s changing. We’ve got more competition, but we’re also becoming more competitive ourselves.”

The Orange County contingent was sworn in with 15 other new postmasters for the Santa Ana district, which serves 3.5 million people and encompasses 1,076 square miles spread over parts of four counties.

A retirement incentive offered by the Postal Service last fall accounted for most of the postmaster vacancies, District Manager Art Martinez said. More than 46,000 employees nationwide took advantage of the early retirement offer, about 350 of them from the Santa Ana district, Martinez said.

The mass departure and other efforts to streamline bureaucracy are just two of the recent changes in the Postal Service’s approach, said Anaheim’s new postmaster, Chester Fields. A postal employee for 29 years, Fields said he believes that the move toward stressing customer service may alter the public’s traditionally negative view of the postal system.

“It’s human nature to notice when things go wrong, but you don’t always get the accolades when things go right,” said Fields, who began as a mail deliverer in 1964. “But we’re used to that.”

The other new postmasters for Orange County are Kenneth Capps, San Clemente; Ruth Gooch, Silverado; David Lyman, Huntington Beach; Dennis McKeown, Newport Beach; and Carol Morales, Lake Forest.