Valentines Postal Office puts its own stamp on Valentine greetings

VALENTINES — The cards and letters start trickling into the little post office in January and reach full flood stage come early February.

They will arrive in huge tubs daily from just about every state and from a dozen or more countries.

The thousands of pieces of Valentine’s Day mail are sent to this out-of-the-way crossroads in Brunswick County for one reason:

A heart-shaped, hand-canceled postmark that says “VALENTINES, VA.”

“It’s a lot of work,” said Postmaster Kathy Fajna, thinking of the holiday decorations she puts up, the school groups and motorcycle clubs she welcomes through the squeaky wooden screen door, and the occasional wedding she hosts.

Then there’s the blisters she gets from postmarking all of that mail by hand; it got so bad last year that she had to wear a golf glove until a callus developed.

“But if one person smiles because of it,” she said, “it’s worth it.”

Last year, Fajna handled more than 15,000 pieces of Valentine’s mail. Normally, the number is about 25,000. “Probably the economy,” she said.

No one would confuse Valentines — just off state Route 46, it’s just a couple of miles from Lake Gaston, and the North Carolina border is not 4 miles down the road — with a big city or even a small town.

It’s purely a community: a few fields of tobacco, cotton and soybeans; an endless stream of logging trucks; and Wright’s General Merchandise, a 1930s general store with the post office tucked into a corner.

Fajna said the post office delivers to about 225 households.

So, what’s Valentines like?

“It’s a romantic community,” said W.T. “Tootie” Jones, with a laugh. “We kid about that all the time.”

On a recent afternoon, Jones was one of the regulars gathered in chairs around the store’s gas heater, chatting about who in the community was ailing, how wet the weather’s been, and what a fine place

Valentines is to be.

“Garden spot of the world,” said Freddie Adams, sipping a Diet Sun Drop soda.

“It’s God’s country,” said Hilton Rawlings, who will turn 82 next fall and who was born and raised in Valentines, though he lived away for a few years. “It’s a good place to live. Good neighbors.”

“We try to look out for each other,” Herbert Palmer said.

“We’re a small community but a community with a big heart,” said Fajna, who grew up about 20 miles away in Emporia and still lives there but feels like a part of Valentines since becoming postmaster in 2006.

Actually, she’s been familiar with Valentines since she was a child.

“I’ve been coming here since I was 10 or 11 years old,” said Fajna, who calls her regular customers “Sugar Pie” and other names of affection. “It wasn’t Valentine’s Day until you went to see Mr. Wright at Valentines and dropped off your cards.”

Willie Wright was the longtime postmaster and store-owner and the man who transformed Valentines into an international sensation in the 1950s when he began rubber-stamping Valentine’s Day mail with an official seal featuring a heart and dogwood blossoms.

Wright died in 2006, but his wife, Frances, continues to run the store.

“We used to sell almost everything,” said Frances Wright, and she still carries a little of this and a little of that.

Across the old wood countertops she sells Valentines T-shirts, slices of sharp cheddar cheese, and 8-ounce glass bottles of ice-cold Coca-Cola from an old-style cooler.

A couple of old washboards hang from the ceiling, and the store remains a repository of local lore and essentially the only gathering spot in Valentines.

The community’s name derives from the first postmaster, William Henry Valentine, who also ran a family store until his death in 1911. The post office remained in the family until 1924, when it moved a mile down the road where it’s been since 1935.

Why Valentines and not Valentine?

Fajna believes the family might have added the “s” because people usually say Valentine’s Day. Or it simply might have been a way to be different. The U.S. Postal Service lists a Valentine, Neb., and a Valentine, Texas, but the only Valentines is in Brunswick County.

So, once a year, Valentines, Va., becomes a hot spot. People drive in from Richmond and Raleigh, Washington and the Outer Banks of North Carolina with their Valentine’s cards.

And then the envelopes and boxes full of Valentine’s from all corners of the globe arrive to be hand-canceled, rubber-stamped and re-mailed to all corners of the globe.

And once a year is enough for all of the hullabaloo.

“It’s fun,” Fajna said with a laugh, “but I don’t know if I could stand it twice a year.”

Bill Lohmann is a staff writer at the Richmond Times-Dispatch.

Get that special postmark

If you can’t make it to Valentines, but you’d like the special postmark on your Valentine’s cards, mail your addressed cards to the Valentines post office in a large envelope. You can put stamps on each of the cards or enclose a check for the price of the stamps at 44 cents per card.

Postmaster Kathy Fajna will hand-cancel the cards with the Valentines postmark and rubber-stamp each with a special red, heart-shaped seal. Mail your cards to:

Postmaster

23 Manning Drive

Valentines, Va. 23887