Sweetheart City

For two weeks before Valentine’s Day, Alberta Maxine Bay becomes one of Cupid’s helpers to thousands who want their valentine greetings to carry a little extra love.

Bay lives in Loveland, Colo., a town of about 50,000 whose name calls to mind hearts and flowers—with a postmark to match. Romantics from around the world send Valentine’s Day cards and letters there to get Loveland’s unique valentine postmark stamped on the envelope.

Bay and other volunteers, who form an assembly line to sort, hand stamp, and re-mail the virtual mountain of cards and love letters, consider it a real labor of love.

“I wish you could hear us laughing,” says Bay, a volunteer since 1980. “I have fun, or I wouldn’t even go.

“We get to talk while we’re doing it, and they tell me I talk too much. And I know they’re telling the truth,” Bay says of the volunteers, mostly women in their 60s and 70s.

A two-week party

Cupid’s helpers look forward to the camaraderie of the annual Loveland tradition, even though it means working four to eight hours every day the two weeks before Valentine’s Day.

They talk, tell jokes, and occasionally are entertained by musicians or storytellers while they’re working, says Kathryn Roth, the Loveland Chamber of Commerce’s valentine program manager.

“It’s kind of a big, two-week party, although they work very hard and they’re very particular,” Roth says.

They love the task and are fun to be around, says Duane Kaye, Loveland valentine coordinator with the local U.S. Postal Service. “Alberta Bay always wears a red sweater or something with valentines when she volunteers,” he says.

Work begins each morning when valentines are delivered from the post office to the Loveland Chamber of Commerce. There, the outer envelopes are opened and emptied, and the enclosed valentines in their pre-stamped and pre-addressed envelopes are sorted by color before the hand stamping begins.

Envelopes are stamped with a cowboy Cupid, a special design, and a four-line poem, selected each year by contest in which local artists and writers submit entries. One example:

From the gateway to the great Rocky Mountains,
Under skies of magnificent blue,
Dan Cupid sends Valentine greetings,
Directly from Loveland to you.

White envelopes are stamped with red ink; colored envelopes, such as red, pink, or purple, are stamped with black ink. Volunteers carefully rubber-stamp each envelope, making sure each imprint is straight and legible. The letters and cards are then counted and returned to the post office where they go through a cancellation machine, which stamps the date, a two-line verse, and Loveland’s ZIP code.

Those valentines then go back to Bay and her fellow volunteers, who check each cancellation for legibility. After passing scrutiny, the cards and letters are mailed to their lucky recipients.

Valentine sweethearts

Loveland’s Valentine’s Day tradition began in the mid-1940s by stamp collectors. Postmaster Elmer Ivers and others from the Loveland Stamp Club conceived the idea as a stamp-collecting novelty.

“The stamp club started it and … decided they needed someone with the gift of gab,’’ says Forrest Knox, a lifelong Loveland resident whose late father was friends with club members. Ted Thompson, chamber of commerce president at the time, was just what they needed.

“Ted Thompson took it and ran with it,’’ Knox says. Thompson saw an opportunity to promote the city by stamping Valentine’s Day cards with a romantic imprint and illustration, as well as the unique Loveland cancellation.

Thompson and his wife, Mabel, known as Loveland’s “Valentine Sweethearts,” managed the free re-mailing program until they retired in 1991. The Thompsons, who have since died, received awards and accolades for their community service, including a bronze plaque memorializing them at Thompson Park downtown.

Millions of valentines have been stamped and re-mailed from Loveland since the program began, surprising as many as 300,000 recipients from all 50 states and more than 100 foreign countries each year.

“It really puts Loveland on the map in a different way,” says Jean Hunt Goudy, a former high school teacher. Goudy, a volunteer since the 1960s, now keeps a record of cards received from foreign countries.

“They came from over 100 different countries last year,” she says. “It’s fun, and you don’t always realize how far they go.”

Appreciation for the volunteers’ work comes by way of gifts, door prizes, lots of baked goodies, special events hosted by the post office, chamber, and local businesses, and a special luncheon on Valentine’s Day.

And judging by the gifts and cards mailed to volunteers, the lucky ones who receive the special valentines appreciate the women’s painstaking work.

“They receive lots of thank-you notes, candy, and gifts,” Kaye says. “One man from Poland sends them a letter every year telling them how much he appreciates them.”

Thank-you notes and cards are posted during the two weeks where all the volunteers can read them. Afterward, they’re stored in scrapbooks, Roth says.

“I was just amazed at how many cards, posters, letters, and gifts the volunteers receive. We had three scrapbooks full of thank-you cards, just from last year,” Roth says.

Valentine’s Day, of course, is a festive time for a town named Loveland. Hundreds of big, red wooden hearts with messages for friends and loved ones adorn lampposts all over town. Some are simple declarations of love to sweethearts and family members; others have romantic poems. Local businesses also post valentine greetings. “It’s a fun time to be in Loveland,” Kaye says.

Several groups of seniors and preschoolers visit the volunteers and have them stamp their valentine cards, Roth says.

“We also get visitors throughout the year who have sent their valentines here for years,” Roth says.

Celebrity mail

Each year begins with a trickle of cards that becomes a flood of up to 55,000 cards a day during the week before Valentine’s Day. Some envelopes contain famous names, such as the president and first lady. Loveland’s special postmark also has gone on cards to Marilyn Monroe, Pope John Paul, Princess Diana, and others. One particularly memorable card was sent by a young girl named April addressed, “To Mom, in care of Heaven.” That valentine, and other cards and notes of appreciation, are part of the Loveland Museum’s “Sweetheart City” permanent display.

Volunteers who stamp and re-mail valentines add a few of their own to the flood of mail from Loveland.

Bay likes to send special valentines to “her sweethearts” every year—baseball player Andres Galarraga and country singer George Strait. She admires both because they’re loyal family men, she says. “Grandmas can have sweethearts, too,” she says with a smile.

Being part of the re-mailing team is always fun, and it’s worth all the effort to send a special valentine from such a beautiful place, Bay says.

“Loveland is quite a Valentine.”

Judith D. Miller is a freelance writer from Grand Junction, Colo.

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