THEY LEFT A LIGHT ON FOR FRANK BRASH.

Byline: DENNIS McCARTHY 

It was the night porch lights all over the San Fernando Valley stayed on until the postman came knocking.

The night the people on Frank Brash's Postal Route 25 in Van Nuys made him proud - made him feel like the most important mail carrier in the city.

He had only been with the Post Office about six years back in 1954 - a young man coming home from World War II after serving as crew chief on a P-38 with the U.S. Air Force's 49th Fighter Group in the South Pacific.

He always figured when he got out of the service he'd go back to the first job he had after graduating from Van Nuys High in 1940. The same job every kid in the Valley seemed to get - working for Lockheed.

``I was getting 50 cents an hour, and time and a half for overtime,'' Frank says. ``That was big money in 1941.''

But the big money was no match for the stability of a government job when he got home from the war - especially a job where they paid you to walk the same streets you'd been walking for free your whole life.

Nobody knew Van Nuys better than the kid who grew up on Vose Street - one of seven children being raised by a young, widowed mother.

``After my father died at 32, the county was going to take us kids and put us into homes. My mother was Italian. She told them over her dead body somebody was going to take her kids.''

To help their mother, Frank and his brothers started hawking newspapers on the corner of Van Nuys and Victory boulevards - out in front of the old Providence Building and Van Nuys supermarket.

Two brothers worked the front doors - two brothers on the back doors - selling the news of the day for a nickel.

``In two days, we could sell 700 to 800 papers, and make $16. That was a lot of money back then. Enough to keep our family together.''

So, yeah, Frank Brash jumped at the chance of a steady government job after the war, working the same streets he grew up on. Getting up at 6 a.m. and walking over to the main Van Nuys Post Office branch on Sylvan Street.

He didn't even blink an eye when his boss called him in one day to congratulate him.

``He gave me Route 25 - the longest, toughest route in the office,'' Frank remembers, laughing. ``I didn't care. I was a young buck playing softball and bowling every night. I could walk all day.''

And that's exactly what postmen did back then - walk. There were no postal trucks for delivery routes. You hefted the bag over your shoulder and you walked until the last letter was delivered.

Frank was so good at it, his boss called him into the office one day in 1954 to congratulate him again.

``He told me we needed someone to be in charge of the drive the post office was having for the Multiple Sclerosis Society, and I was the guy.''

Fliers went out to all the carriers in the Valley so they could stick them in with the mail that day. They said if people wanted to contribute to the MS Society, they should leave their porch light on.

``After we walked our routes, all the carriers went back to knock on the doors with the porch lights on to collect for the MS Society,'' Frank said.

It was a different time back then, he concedes. Mail carriers knew the people they delivered the mail to. And the people knew them.

``We'd keep an eye out for the older people to make sure they were OK,'' says retired postman Keith Mower, who worked with Frank until both men retired from the post office in 1981.

Once a month in the back room at Coco's Restaurant on Sherman Way in Van Nuys, the retired postal carriers get together to reminisce and remember the best times of their careers.

``It was just a closer-knit community back then,'' Mower says. ``You knew everyone's kids, and what was going on in their lives. People just seemed to care more back then.''

How much the people on Route 25 cared, Frank Brash would find out that night. No postman in the Valley was going to raise more money for MS research than the guy walking the longest, toughest route in the Van Nuys office.

Every porch light on the nearly 100 homes on his route was lit the night the postman came knocking.

``People handed me a check for $5 or took a couple of bucks out of their purses and wallets. Up and down every street, every porch light was on, waiting for me to come.''

By the time they walked their routes that night, the carriers in the Van Nuys post office returned with more than $10,000 for the MS Society.

A few weeks later, Frank's boss called him into the office to congratulate him again. ``Uh-oh,'' Frank thought.

His boss had already ``congratulated'' him with the longest, toughest route in Van Nuys, and had him working extra hours on the MS Society drive. What new job did he want to congratulate him with now?

Mower and a few of the other carriers were in the office with a man Frank recognized immediately. It was Tom Harmon, an All-American collegian and professional football player, who was serving as chairman of the MS Society Drive that year.

Frank was given the honor of handing Harmon a mail bag filled with more than $10,000 from all the people in the Valley who had left their porch lights on.

Waiting for the postman to come knocking.

Dennis McCarthy, [phone]

dennis.mccarthy(at)dailynews.com

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Photo:

Frank Brash shows a 1978 photo of himself using the first local postal cart to help speed up mail delivery. Before that, postal carriers hefted the mail in bags slung over their shoulders.

Gene Blevins/Special to the Daily News