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MARIO'S PAGE
Mario Romualdo, Jr. was born on April 12, 1959 as the first child of Mario and Lili
Romualdo in Sao Paulo, Brazil. His paternal Grandfather was a Brazilian of Dutch
heritage. His paternal Grandmother was of Portuguese heritage. His maternal
grandparents emigrated from the Ukraine to Brazil to escape the conflicts of Europe
during that era. This mixture in lineage explains his mostly European roots, as
opposed to the South American influences in his life. In 1965, the family emigrated to
the United States. In 1968, the family which now included the third child, Richard,
moved to Maplewood, which at that time was a model community in New Jersey.
After being in the United States for only four years, and arriving with two children, two
suit cases and $25.00 in their pocket, they were able to purchased a house of their
own.
Mario remembers watching Neil Armstrong stepping on the moon. The first American;
the first Human to set foot on another world. His childhood was basically happy. He
was always active in church with the youth, and in various positions. He also played
several instruments in the church band. He attended Seth Boyden School, and later
Maplewood Junior High School which is now a middle school. In 1975, he attended a
church youth camp. It was a wonderful experience, and he realized that this was
something that he loved, and at the age of 16, he knew that this was something that
he wanted to be a part of. Within four years, he found himself on the recreation staff,
and in the sixteen years that he served as an unpaid member of the Christian Youth
Camp Ministries Staff and eventually rose to the highest post in the organization. This
is where his talents and abilities were both developed and put to the test. It was also
at one of the camps that Mario met his future bride, Gladys Kuc. They married 10
years after meeting.
In 1978, Mario graduated from Columbia High School in Maplewood, New Jersey and
immediately went into the work force. In 1979 he joined the Union Police Department
as a Reserve Police Officer. The time spent as a reserve officer was enlightening and
educational. Within six months of joining, he was promoted to the rank of Sergeant,
and before the year was up, he was again promoted to the rank of Lieutenant, and
retired at that rank after two years and over 2000 volunteer man hours of service to the
community. Mario was certified as a Divisional Commander and Traffic Control
Instructor. This experience was worth the effort and was my small way of giving a
small part back to the community.
Mario was employed in various jobs starting at the age of 16. He worked at gasoline
stations, an auto body shop, two tool and die machine shops, the Singer Sewing
Machine Company, a factory, a jewelry store, and two computer service companies.
In 1988, after being married for roughly one month, he started his own small business,
Federal Cleaning Company which was a janitorial business. This endeavor was very
successful, however owning a business meant never taking vacations or time off. After
two years of this, he felt the need to look elsewhere for employment. In 1990, Mario
took the Postal Service entrance examination and in 1992 he was hired as a
temporary Letter Carrier. For two years, he worked both for the Postal Service, and
continued with his janitorial business. Working both full time was difficult, but he had
contracts that he had an obligation to honor.
In 1994, he was hired as a part time flexible Letter Carrier with the United States
Postal Service. This meant that he went from temporary employee, to career
employee. Within nine months of beginning his full time career, he began serving as
an Acting Supervisor . He served as Acting Supervisor of Customer Service in the
following units: Delivery & Collections which involves the Letter Carrier craft, and Mail
Processing & Distribution which involves supervising the Clerk craft and movement of
mail for delivery. This was a temporary fill in position, and he did well in it. He is also
a Certified Accident Investigator. The work as a Letter Carrier is hard, even though it
appears easy, and the way things are changing with the service makes a difficult job
even harder. In all honesty, if he had to do it over, I would not be employed by the
Postal Service.
Mario last served as a supervisor in July of 1999. He took the necessary tests to
become a full time supervisor and things appeared promising on the surface. The
Postmaster at the facility where he works always told him that if you were smarter
than your boss, that you would never go anywhere. He never quite understood what he
meant by that, until one day, one of the regular supervisors told him that the
Postmaster said to him that Mario was the smartest persons that he knew. That
statement hit Mario like a bag of rocks. He's stuck and can't get anywhere! Imagine
that. Too smart for higher position. Any business in the private sector would elevate a
promising employee but in government, they are kept back. Does that make any
rational sense to you? It doesn't to him. In a related matter, Mario had once submitted
an application to work for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) but was told that he
was over qualified for the position that was offered. Sure he was. This was funny.
Well, obviously, it looks like he will be stuck carrying mail until he's 66 years old, but
he cannot seriously see himself doing that for the rest of his life. This is one reason
that he and his wife decided to get into business for themselves. They worked the
businesses for several years however again, things became difficult to juggle so
they decided to suspend their businesses for awhile.
Mario is also involved with the Boy Scouts of America as a Scouter. More
information about this can be found on his scout page which is linked below.
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