This story originally appeared in the November 2025 issue of Town&Gown magazine.
Long before he was widely known as “Mike the Mailman,” Mike Herr was a young postal worker sorting mail in a back room in the downtown State College post office. Although it was a dirty job that did not require customer interaction, the jeans and t-shirts he and his co-worker wore to work were deemed “inappropriate work attire” by upper management. The two were reprimanded; in response, they showed up at work the following week wearing rented tuxedos.
Herr’s daughter, Marykate Weeks, refers to these kinds of lighthearted stunts as her father’s “antics.” In a new memoir entitled “Pushing the Envelope,” the father-daughter duo have documented the stories and antics which led Herr to achieve icon status — and to impact the lives of countless Penn State students — over his 40-year tenure at Penn State.
‘An un-postal post office’
Herr’s memoir kicks off in Lock Haven (ZIP code: 17745), where he was born and raised. It’s also where he met his high school sweetheart, Mary Kathleen, whom he calls “Katie,” and whom, after 49 years of marriage, he still refers to affectionately as “my bride.”
From there, the book follows Herr’s professional journey to University Park (ZIP code: 16802) before going into the impetus behind many of the joyful gimmicks he became known for over the years, including custom rubber stamps he used on outgoing packages, like “I mailed this two weeks ago,” and “Send money or cookies.”
In fact, cookies are something that many Penn State alumni associate with Herr, who famously started a “Cookie of the Month” award board — his way of slyly ensuring that his clients (“I never called them customers; they were my clients,” he says) would bring him dozens of cookies to “judge” each month.
He also became known for flashing a “Nice Sneakers!” sign from behind the counter and covering the walls with Penn State posters and memorabilia.
“It was such an un-postal post office. I always said, ‘If you have to spend eight hours somewhere, you can also make it a good time,’” Herr says. “I would make a connection with every person who came in, whether it was about their hat, their shirt, whatever.”
That attempt to connect extended to Penn State’s large international student community, whom he supported by posting signs that read “welcome to the post office” in as many different languages as he could gather.
‘Positivity breeds positivity’
Anyone who asks Herr “how are you?” always gets the same reply: “I’ve never had a bad day.”
However, the book does recount several not-so-great incidents that Herr dealt with over the years, including a serious bicycle accident he endured while commuting to campus from his former home on Nimitz Avenue, and the events leading up to what he calls “The Great Rally of 2000.”
“That’s when the postmaster demanded I take all my non-postal signs down. That didn’t sit very well with a lot of students, and they had a big rally, going all the way from campus to the downtown post office. Three days later, all the signs were back up,” he says.
It’s not surprising that the community had his back. He says he is frequently recognized by strangers who stop him in public to share a favorite memory of an interaction they had with him in his post office. He wells up with emotion at the thought of how his words or actions have stayed with some people for decades.
“I didn’t realize at the time the impact I had on these kids,” he says. “Truly, I’m just so touched by all the kind things people say to me because I was once kind to them. I wanted to make their experience positive. There’s so much negativity around. I think negativity breeds negativity, and I think positivity breeds positivity. So I try to create that.”
Nine years in the making
Weeks, who lives in Ardmore, says she and her dad casually started working on his book together upon his retirement nine years ago.
“I think at first we had the idea that in all his free time, he could write a book,” she says. “But I think Dad realized quickly into retirement that he was busier than ever.”
His post-retirement schedule includes working as a co-host of “The Obligatory PSU Pre-game Show,” visiting family (both of his daughters live in the Philadelphia area with their husbands and his grandkids, Declan, 7, and Etta, 5 months), taking care of the grounds at the Linden Hall home he and Mary Kathleen used to operate as a bed and breakfast, playing tennis and poker, and giving back to the community he loves in many ways, such as continuing the “Mail Call” tradition he began at THON in the late 1980s.
Despite Herr’s full calendar, Weeks decided in early 2025 that it was time to get serious about finishing the memoir. Both say working on the project became a bonding experience for the two of them.
“Just about every day over the last six months, she’s given me some homework to do,” he says. “It’s been great, because she’s learned so much about my childhood while I’m still living. It’s not something you talk about every day with your children. It was natural, really cool.”
Weeks hopes the book will not only spark good memories for alumni who were at Penn State during Herr’s tenure but also, “I think there are a few lessons in the book about just taking a beat and trying to be more kind, more grateful,” she says. “I feel like this book is the stamp to my dad’s legacy.”
“Pushing the Envelope: A Memoir by Mike ‘The Mailman’ Herr” is self-published through Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing and can be ordered through Amazon or through Herr’s website: mikethemailmanbook.com. T&G
Karen Walker is a freelance writer in State College.
