Mailroom matriarch Bernice Neuhaus, 83, delivers youthful effort at City Hall

MARLBOROUGH -- Visitors to City Hall are often surprised to see Bernice Neuhaus at work. The white-haired 83-year-old can usually be found climbing the stairs with an armload of mail or tugging a heavy dolly loaded with deliveries to the Post Office.

The elevator is not an option, not as far as she's concerned.

``A lot of men try to help her," said Tom Abel, her boss and the city's finance chief. ``She insists on doing it herself."

Neuhaus may call herself City Hall's mail girl, but she is the matriarch of the mailroom, a friend and confidant to mayors and clerks alike. For the last 16 years, she has worked from a tiny basement office, making sure that bills, legal correspondence, and interoffice mail get where they need to go. Last month, she stuffed 4,000 city water bills in envelopes before mailing them to residents.

``I'm not working to make the money," Neuhaus said. ``I'm working to make me happy."

She came out of retirement to take the job. For years she ran Bernice's Beauty Parlor in her home about a mile from City Hall and raised two daughters; her husband was an inspector at General Motors in Framingham. They retired together in their early 60s, and got in a few years of traveling before he died of cancer.

Neuhaus mourned. Then, at age 64, she decided that it was time get a driver's license.

``There's one word that I think is important: accept," Neuhaus said.

But friends say she does more than accept -- she embraces life. Reinelde Poole, a friend and onetime assistant to former mayor Michael Hogan, said she recommended Neuhaus for the mailroom job when it came open.

``She loves people," Poole said. ``And she loves to find out everything about them."

Poole retired from City Hall in 1997 at age 77, but that's another story.

On a typical day, Neuhaus visits more than 40 offices in the building, from personnel in the basement to the mayor's suite five flights up. She carries her stack of oversized orange envelopes as if they were schoolbooks.

There's no missing her in her red sweater and matching beaded necklace. She wears stretchy cloth sandals -- no orthopedic shoes for her.

``I'm no goody-goody," she said.

Everyone knows her by first name, including the mayor. She knows the parents of many employees. She can update an office on the condition of a sick child or a retired co-worker, and the latest scuttlebutt. She took an evening course on handwriting analysis years back and sometimes has fun looking at the writing on envelope addresses. (An especially loopy G or Y, for example, indicates sex appeal, she says.)

But Neuhaus said she doesn't try to influence public policy. She watches City Council meetings on television.

And most city employees know better than to try to slip private unstamped mail by her. On the few occasions when someone has tried, Neuhaus returned it personally.

One hand on her hip, Neuhaus playfully chided City Council president Arthur Vigeant on a recent afternoon at City Hall for mentioning her modest pay during a City Council meeting.

``If we had 99 more like her here, we'd have no problems," Vigeant said.

Her daughter -- Carlene DiDonato, who works as an administrator at a children's summer camp -- said her mother fears little. When camp counselors offered to strap her into a 30-foot-high wire ride called a ``zip line," Neuhaus, then 81, seized the opportunity, even though it meant scaling a tree by pegs.

``There's my mother in these little sandals and a pair of shorts; she climbed right up and didn't hesitate," DiDonato said.

An avid reader, Neuhaus started bringing her old paperbacks to City Hall for others to read. When she spotted a shelving unit headed for the trash, she moved it to the employee break room and started a book exchange. Now the shelves are overflowing.

Often her mail crate is, too. One day last week, she delivered five crates to the Post Office across the street. She rolled her dolly up to the delivery gate, surrounded by much younger letter carriers and drivers. Just as at City Hall, they all know her name.

She shows up even in blizzards, said postal manager Steve Belliveau. ``And she has calluses from all the guys kissing her."

Always in motion, Neuhaus beelined toward one of the mailroom's youngest workers, who sported a buzz cut and a maze of tattoos. She smiled and deposited two candies in his hand before heading out, something she does regularly. It was the final ritual of her workday and now she could go home, she said. Her lawn needs mowing.

Megan Woolhouse can be reached at woolhouse@globe.com or at 508-820-4236.