Daniel Horn: Service with a smile and a story at Trumansburg’s USPS

By Jaime Cone Hughes

Walk into the Trumansburg United States Postal Service office, and you’re likely to be greeted with a smile by one of the branch’s longtime employees, Daniel Horn. His personable demeanor, patience and willingness to work on any problem until it’s solved have made him a welcome presence in the daily lives of many Trumansburg residents. 

But it’s not just Horn’s unwavering professionalism that makes him stand out to customers, and that is why Tompkins Weekly is naming him this month’s Hometown Hero.  

“He is the only postal worker I have ever known at any post office anywhere to greet every person who enters by first name,” said post office customer Vivien Rose, who nominated Horn.

“His cheerful greeting invites conversation with him, or with others in line as we wait to see him or his co-workers,” Rose said in her nomination letter. “Every day, Dan nurtures Trumansburg by recognizing customers by name.”

“I’ve been in Trumansburg my whole life, and I’m 63,” retired postmaster Timothy Gatch said, “and Dan knows more people in Trumansburg than I do. He’s easy to get along with; people are just happy to see him. He makes them smile.”

Gatch said people often assumed Horn was the one in charge. “Most people thought he was the postmaster,” he said with a chuckle.

Horn began his career at the United States Postal Service’s Trumansburg office 22 years ago. He started as a part-timer — before he was promoted to the position of full-time regular clerk, he also held a part-time position at the Trumansburg ShurSave.

“I worked two jobs in a day, oftentimes seven days a week,” he said. “But it was what was needed at the time.”

Originally from Syracuse, Horn moved to Trumansburg when he married Trumansburg native Marcia Horn in 2001.

“Her family has lived here for their entire lives,” Horn said. “We are in the house that her dad grew up in. It’s pretty cool.”

The move to Trumansburg — and the need to hold two concurrent jobs — came after Horn was downsized from two consecutive jobs in the Syracuse area. One, a private industry computer operations manager position, he had held for 15 years.

“The late ’90s through Y2K was hard for a lot of people,” Horn said. “It was very frustrating.”

Ultimately, “It worked out great,” he said of moving to Tompkins County. Initially, there was some adjusting from city living to a smaller town. “I’d lived in Syracuse for 35 years, and it’s a change. It’s a slower pace, in most cases.”

What has kept him at his busy USPS job for over two decades?

“I do like the interaction with the general public,” Horn said, “and I’ve worked way harder at other jobs for less money than I do now.”

Horn enjoys spending time with both his coworkers and his customers.

“We have about 700 P.O. [post office] boxes here, and half of [the people who have] them are in every day or every two days, so you see them all the time,” Horn said. 

“He really cares about this community, and really cares about the people in this community as well,” Sarah Reynolds, part-time flexible clerk, said of her coworker of seven years. “He goes above and beyond.”

“He has a great personality and the best stories,” Reynolds added. She said that one day recently Horn mentioned that he and his friends used to “hop cars” when he was a 10-year-old delivering newspapers in the winter.

“They would grab the bumper and get dragged behind it,” Reynolds explained. 

The children would hold on, letting their shoes skate along the slippery ground, and Horn recalled to Reynolds a time when he tried to “hop” a snow plow, and the plow salted the road. “Poor Dan got a face full of salt,” Reynolds said. “He never did that again.” 

Reynolds, who is 34, also said that Horn is always willing to offer a quick bit of wisdom. “He’s going to give great advice, even if he’s not intending to, and it’s genuine,” she said.

Horn, Reynolds and the other nine employees at the Trumansburg office tend to wear many hats, switching between many different tasks throughout the day. 

For Horn, one of the biggest challenges of the job was initially learning the ropes. “I had never done this type of work,” he said. 

By far the most difficult period in the years that followed were the months during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic.

“Because it was extremely hectic,” Horn said. “I wouldn’t say stressful — just busy. We had at least two to three times the normal amount of packages and mail pieces coming into the building with the same number of working hours, same number of people [working]. You just had to go that much faster, that much more efficiently.”

Customers during the pandemic were shipping necessities like paper towels, toilet paper and cases of water to loved ones across the country. 

“No one was able to see their family,” Horn added. “No one could travel, so they were sending their greetings and wishes through the mail.”

Through it all, Horn was on the frontlines.

“He was face-to-face with customers every single day,” Gatch said. “We didn’t close down or close our window services, and he was there every day. There were so many unknowns with [COVID-19]. People were dying from it, and he didn’t say, ‘I don’t want to be up there,’ and he’s the main person at the window. He had more hours clocked there than any employee there.”

Post office employees had to be six feet away from each other while sorting mail, and everyone had to wear masks.

“When you’re throwing 2,000 packages a day and you’re masked up, you get a little winded, so to speak,” Horn said. “But that’s the job we signed up for, so that’s what we had to execute. How can you prepare for something that’s unprecedented?”

A lot has changed over the years, Horn said. When it comes to navigating an ever-changing system, Horn does his best to help customers find the best options and to address any concerns about their packages.

“His patience, helpfulness and knowledge of the latest quirks of a USPS that has undergone substantial change since 2020 helps me choose the most appropriate of the dizzying array of constantly changing options for safe delivery of my packages and letters to family members at home and abroad,” Rose wrote in her letter nominating Horn.

Horn plans to retire in the next few years, and he is looking forward to the more relaxing days ahead.

“I’m a very big sports fan,” he said, “and I’ve become more of a homebody over the years, and spend a lot of time with my wife and our family.” He and his wife each have two adult children from previous marriages, and they have four grandchildren: three living in Trumansburg and one in Syracuse.

Horn said that he does not plan to move away from Trumansburg any time soon. Or ever.

“I love it,” he said. “I’m not moving away from here. I already told my wife, it’s the last stop.” 

Tompkins Weekly’s Hometown Heroes Award is sponsored by Security Mutual Insurance and Canopy by Hilton Ithaca.