This is a printer-friendly version of an article from Zip06.com.
10/17/2018 08:30 AMMarie Connors never wastes a day. For her, life is all about connecting with the people around her and building special relationships.
“I am a communicator,” Marie says. “I like to communicate and that’s why I make all my own cards.”
It’s not just creativity, however, that inspires her to custom-make each post. Marie married her husband, Jim, after a year at the University of Bridgeport studying journalism.
“We got married with pennies and my husband Jim says, ‘We can’t afford you buying all these cards,’” Marie says.
It was then that Marie decided to start making her own cards to send out to people.
“I got construction paper and cut pictures out of magazines and old cards. At that point I probably sent 30 or 40 birthday cards each year,” she says. “And it just became a hobby.”
Now she uses computer software to create her cards, but she makes sure to always customize her cards for the people for whom they were made.
“I’ll look up in history what happened on this day and I might be able to find something that happened that might connect to you as a person,” she says. “So my mind is always working.”
Often, Marie will combine events in the person’s life with old photographs of them, events from history, and, sometimes, zany holidays that not everyone would know about like, for instance, Sunshine Day.
“I’ve been told by many people they can’t wait to get my card because it’s always something different,” she says. “It’s hard to find something that specifically fits the person and that’s what I like to do.”
She keeps a list of recipients and their birthdates along with a record of what cards she’s sent them in the past so that she can make sure every letter is something new.
“I send out over 400 cards a year. Not Christmas. That’s just cards,” she says.
One of Marie’s longest-running relationships links her home in East Haven to the rest of the world.
In high school, Marie met a Japanese man during a trip to the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. The pair has been communicating by email and regular mail ever since, often trading photos across borders.
“My mother always sent cards, so I inherited that agenda from her,” she says. “I saw that growing up.”
Though Marie has an intimate relationship with mail, sending her cards never really crossed over into her professional life as a mail carrier. She and Jim say that for all her patronage in the form of stamps, Marie never received a discount for her cards.
Still, she would come up with inspiration for her cards while walking her routes. Now retired, Marie worked for the post office for 20 years. Though she moved around a lot, her routes covered West Haven and Hamden.
Her retirement has so far taken her on trips with Jim, who retired from his job last year. Just recently, the pair took a road trip west, first visiting the Lucille Ball Comedy Festival in Jamestown, New York, then to the Basketball Hall of Fame, and finally to the Creation Museum in Kentucky, tying in her new project: a Bible study group in the Saint Padre Pio parish.
“Over the years I’ve taken a lot of courses here, there, and everywhere,” she says.
In 2008, she took a four-year course with Sacred Heart Academy, earning a diploma after studying every book of the Bible.
“I wanted to bring my knowledge to the church,” Marie says. “It’s five years now that I’ve been teaching a small group…bible studies.”
“The scripture can be very difficult to interpret…We can’t judge them on our society because they’re different than we are,” she says. “Again, another form of communication.”
Her bible group focuses on studying the readings in a cultural and historical context
“My life has always been people,” Marie says.
Whether it’s helping people learn about their faith in bible study or connecting with them through greeting cards, Marie finds ways to teach and communicate.
Before she took her bible group on as her side project, Marie was a Girl Scout leader for 16 years during which time she also trained new leaders.
“Our lives are kind of like passages, you know, that you’re doing this for a length of time and then you grow out of it and…you go on to something else,” Marie says. “I gave it my all when I was doing it and now I’m doing else I’m giving my all to.
“Anything worthwhile is a lot of work.”