The Tipton Conservative August. 19, 1976 written by Krista Clark
Transcribed by Sharon Elijah, May 1, 2023

Sunbury Loses Post Office Business; Claim Survey ‘Rigged’

     The town of Sunbury, located midway between Bennett and Durant in the eastern part of Cedar county, is struggling to maintain its identity.

     Sunbury is down to one general store. And if the U.S. Postal Service has its way, pretty soon the town of Sunbury itself will be a thing of the past.

     At least that’s what the last proprietor of Petersen’s store in Sunbury believes—she was the last postmaster, too—that the little town will probably ever see.

     According to Vernon Petersen, who owned and operated Petersen’s store in Sunbury and was postmaster for nearly 30 years, and his daughter-in-law, Deanna Petersen, postmaster for 3 months, the closing of the post office in Sunbury spelled the end of the store—a store which had served the town and surrounding countryside since Petersen’s father opened it in 1907.

     The U.S. Postal Service terminated the post office in Sunbury June 23. By Aug. 1, Petersen’s store, home of the post office since 1907, was gone too.

     Vernon Petersen said he thinks the postal service just planned to close the post office after he retired this year and Deanna, who served as postmaster since Vernon retired March 26, agrees that the postal service wanted to shut the operation down at a time when no one would be put out of work. But both Petersens feel the postal service has done an injustice to the town and that with the passing of the post office Sunbury is going to have a difficult time keeping its identity.

     “I really resented the whole deal,” Vernon Petersen said. “This is going to hurt the town.”

     Deanna Petersen, who operated the store until August 1 with the help of her husband, said the postal service sent out a survey March 1 to find out what the postal needs of the people being served by the post office in Sunbury were and also to see what kind of service they would like in the future.

     But Deanna and Vernon Petersen both believe the postal service never had any intention of maintaining postal service as it is in Sunbury and they say the bulk of the people who were served by the office are just as unhappy as they that the post office is gone. The loss of the post office meant less business for the store, Deanna said, and so eventually it became obvious the store wouldn’t make it either.

     One of the objections the Petersens had to the closing of the post office was that they didn’t feel they were given adequate notice of the closing. They were supposed to get 90 days, they say, but weren’t. Also, both agreed that the survey didn’t reflect the true feelings of the town and all those served.

     Vernon Petersen described the number of those who didn’t want the post office as “padded” and said the survey itself “was all messed up.” He said the survey was made to appear that many of the people didn’t want the post office, when in fact, he says, everyone was in favor of keeping it. Although the post office may have been losing money on the Sunbury branch, neither of the Petersens believe that their post office was any more of a liability than other postal services around the country.

     Deanna said the people of Sunbury were never really given a choice if they wanted to keep the post office and that the survey only asked which of three alternative kinds of service the town would like. These included regular rural delivery, a cluster of mail boxes in the town or a community post office which would offer much more limited services than were available.

     “We never really had a choice to keep it,” she said. As it has turned out, these formerly served by the Sunbury post office now receive their mail by regular rural delivery—but in order to mail packages and buy stamps they must go to Bennett or Durant, 5 miles away.

     Added to the loss of the post office, the people of Sunbury may soon find the town isn’t even recognized by the postal service and after that, the Petersens believe, the identity of the town will be gone too.

     Deanna said the postal service told her that Sunbury would have its own postal address for another year, but that then the address would be changed to Wilton, the town from which Sunbury’s mail comes. And with no Sunbury address, pretty soon other recognition of Sunbury will probably be gone too, the Petersens believe.

     Sunbury was one of 288 towns that the Iowa Department of Transportation (DOT) decided were not important enough to be included on the state’s 1976 map. But after an angry outcry against leaving out these communities, 112 of them, including Sunbury, were put back on the map. But without the post office, the Petersens think it won’t be long before offices like the DOT decided Sunbury just doesn’t exist any more.

     “We fought the closing to the end,” Deanna Petersen said, “nobody wanted it closed.” She said several of the state’s congressmen were contacted about the closing and 2nd District Congressman Michael Blouin “tried to the end” to save the post office.

     “I just don’t feel they were doing right, Deanna said. “A lot of people hated to see it go,” she added, noting that the post office and the store had served for many years as a place for people to gather getting their groceries and waiting for the mail.

     “A lot of older people sure do miss it,” Deanna said. “People would sit and talk and wait for the mail. And a lot of country people would come in too for their stamps. Now they go to Bennett or Durant.

     Deanna doesn’t think the closing of the post office, and now the store, reflects a decline in the town. She said that recently 2 new homes were built in the community and that the population is holding steady between 90 and 100. The children go to school in Durant.

     But Vernon Petersen isn’t so sure that the business like the one he operated since his father retired in 1948 can make it in places like Sunbury anymore. The town is still served by a general store, Meier and Col. General Merchandise, which sells just about everything Petersen’s store used to sell, but he thinks hard times are ahead for small town businesses.

     When Petersen decided to retire he had a large sale where he sold the bulk of his merchandise. For almost all of the store’s lifetime it had sold food, clothing, hardware, feed and other items. In January at the sale nearly everything went and for the last several months the store had been limited to the sale of grocery items such as milk, bread, cheese, cigarettes, candy, pop and gasoline.

     Petersen said his business was good through all the years he and his father operated the store (Vernon Petersen joined the business in 1930 after graduating from high school), but that in recent years “it was getting pretty hard to make ends meet.”

     “Some of the people we were serving were third and fourth generation—but the prices of things kept going up and up—the overhead just getting bigger and bigger,” he said.

     Petersen said he had to have help in the store to keep up with all the work, had a full-time employee and part-time help on the weekends. But Petersen said it got to the point where at least half his time was spent doing the bookwork for the store and that “there was just too much to do.”

     Although he felt he “had the best grocery business in town,” Petersen said his business had reached a point where most of the sales were fairly small and that the store “had gotten to be an emergency store.” Many people would go to Muscatine or Davenport for all their groceries and the $20-$25 orders he used to get had all but disappeared.

     Also contributing to the difficulties of the business, Petersen said, was that whole-sale grocery houses “don’t want to make sales to small businesses.” Comparing his store to the operation of a small farm or any other small business, Petersen said the trouble in trying to maintain a small operation almost wasn’t worth the effort any more.

     And Petersen says the complexion of Sunbury has changed too, adding to the problem of maintaining commerce in the town. Many of the residents of the community are young and work in the Quad Cities or other larger nearby towns, buying their groceries and other supplies where they work. There are fewer retired persons living in Sunbury now who would need, or want to use, what is offered by a general store such as he operated.

     Deanna Petersen, who quit her job at the grain elevator where her husband works in Sunbury to run the Petersen store, had thought for a while the store could continue without the business of the post office.

     “Without that, though, there was not enough business to pay for that many hours,” she said. “There’s just too much competition—it was hard to keep it going.” She said that over most of the summer the store had had good business, especially from the Mexican-American migrant workers who work in the Sunbury area during the summer, but after that business had slacked off.

     So now Deanna Petersen is wondering whether she’ll get her job back at the grain company and the people of Sunbury wonder about the future of the town. Vernon Petersen is playing golf, fishing, working around the house and helping his children. He was ready to retire and so far says he’s enjoying himself.

     But nobody yet has forgiven the postal service for closing down the local post office, or for passing off as fact a survey they say wasn’t accurate or true. The fear is still there that soon Sunbury will cease to be recognized as a town, that it will lose its identity, and for the moment, the postal service will receive the blame for Sunbury’s loss.