For many of the recruits training at boot camp at Recruit Training Command (RTC), Great Lakes, there is one particular group of employees on whom they rely the most: mail room personnel.

As communication via telephone is limited, it's the incoming and outgoing letters that are the lifelines to the recruits' loved ones during the eight weeks recruits are here.

"For a lot of these recruits, this is their first time away from home - their first real step in becoming an adult. This is a big deal for them; being away from home at boot camp," said Lt. j.g. Kristen Sullivan, ship's officer, USS Hopper. "It's tough for a lot of these kids and mail is one of the few ways that they're actually able to make it through boot camp.

"They have that support system at home. Their family members are writing them words of encouragement every day. I'm very close with my family and I know if I had to have gone through the Naval Academy without any sort of letters and words of encouragement from my family, there's no way I would have succeeded."

Approximately 38,000 recruits are trained annually at RTC and handling all of their letters are the mailroom workers contracted through Goodwill Great Lakes.

According to Rennan David, director of logistic support services for Goodwill Great Lakes, the average amount of mail handled annually at RTC is more than 2 million letters and packages, or about 168,000 monthly.

"The mail we get today from the post office hub in Palatine, Illinois, is delivered to the recruits on the same day," said David. "That is what we are proud of and we're especially proud of the employees who make that happen."

RTC's mailroom is a satellite consolidated mail facility of the main post office located on Naval Station Great Lakes (NSGL) main side. Three times daily the United States Postal Service (USPS) delivers mail to the main mailroom. From there it gets sorted and delivered to RTC's mailroom where again it is sorted by the barracks, or ships as they are referred to at RTC.

From there, driver Frank Estrella makes daily runs Monday through Friday to each ship to drop off the recruits' mail and picks up the outgoing mail. Letters requiring a signature are first routed through the North Chicago post office and then onto NSGL.

"That process can be confusing to the sender because if they are tracking the letter online, USPS will scan the mail as having arrived and then once it's delivered to NSGL, it's scanned as delivered," said Sandy Harris, director of postal operations, Consolidated Mail Facility, Great Lakes. "This doesn't mean it's in the recruits' hands just yet. The recruit is sent a request slip that gets delivered by Estrella letting them know they must come to the post office to sign for the letter."

Goodwill is in the process of acquiring scanners by next year that will allow RTC workers to scan the parcels when mail has been delivered to each barrack.

As Estrella tosses large, bulging sacks of mail into each barracks' mailroom, he's also retrieving outgoing mail sacks of equal size from the recruits.

Next in the sorting process, are the recruit mail petty officers whose responsibility it is to sort through the mail in their barracks' mail room by each division. Recruits chosen as the mail petty officers are required to take a test in the mailroom to ensure they are competent enough to be able to swiftly handle sorting the mail. Divisions cannot receive their mail until a recruit has passed the test and has been properly trained.

"The recruit division commanders choosing their mail petty officers need to be confident with whom they're choosing because they are handling somebody else's mail too," said Reiko Butterfield, who has worked in the mailroom for 17 years.

Assisting Butterfield in the RTC mailroom is Maria Strawder along with Anthony Thomas, who works as a floater in the office as needed. They must input each undeliverable letter in the command's online resource system when it has been misaddressed, the recruit has changed ships, or the recruit has already graduated and detached from RTC for their next command.

"The mail system here at RTC is extremely important. Our mail workers have a very important job because for a lot of these recruits, if they don't receive mail, if it's late or if it gets lost, they're not going to have that motivation that day and it's really going to throw off their training," said Sullivan.

Each week, they handle an average of anywhere from 1,500 to 2,000 letters that are undeliverable as addressed.

"It takes patience to deal with this vast amount of mail, especially when dealing with every individual piece of mail. I have to be patient," said Strawder.

Letters that cannot be forwarded are eventually returned to the sender.

When a grandmother of a recruit recently called for assistance in tracking down a parcel sent to her recruit, Harris was able to assist her. Afterward, she personally wrote him a letter to express her gratitude in his efforts.

"I did 23 years in the Army and I know what it's like to not get your mail. I know how it feels," said Harris. "It's good taking care of the parents and the recruits at the same time in helping to get them their mail."

Though they work mainly behind the scenes on base, the mail
room workers' efforts do not go unnoticed.

"There are numerous jobs here that we all have in order to make training run smoothly and not one is more important than the other," said Sullivan. "All the jobs play an integral role in helping the recruits to succeed in boot camp including that of our mail workers."

For more news from Recruit Training Command, visit www.navy.mil/.