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He later left the priesthood, married the love of his life, Mary Jane, and had two daughters. He spent nearly three decades as an academic adviser at Southern Illinois University-Edwardsville before he retired in 1998.

He was a prolific letter writer, and his connection to the Catholic Church and its charitable arms was passed on to his family members.

After her husband died, Mary Jane decided to donate some of his retirement money to various causes. One of them, the , is a thrift store and food pantry where one of the couple’s daughters, Ann Schutzius, volunteers.

The Wellston Center, founded by two Catholic nuns more than three decades ago, operates out of the gymnasium next to the long-abandoned Notre Dame parish on Kienlen Avenue. It’s not far from the Wellston Housing Authority’s subsidized apartments, which were slated for the wrecking ball but are now scheduled for a $44 million overhaul.

A $10,000 check to the pantry, sent in April from Mary Jane, never arrived. Mary Jane canceled it and mailed a new one. It didn’t arrive either.

It turns out the Wellston Center is having a problem receiving its mail. Other donors have called the center’s director, Andrew Diemer, to say their mail was returned.

“I have received calls weekly from volunteers who told me they have sent a check in the mail, and it got sent back,� Diemer says.

The center has a street address, 1705 Kienlen Avenue, and a post office box (P.O. Box 11969), but mail doesn’t always get through. Things are so bad that both Diemer and Ann Schutzius ran experiments — and had the mail returned as undeliverable.

The timing is particularly bad because the Wellston Center lost its biggest source of revenue last fall. For 16 years, New Balance would donate shoes to the nonprofit, which would sell them for about $20 in its thrift store. The store is only open on Fridays and Saturdays, from 9 a.m. to noon, because it is staffed by volunteers.

For years, there would be lines outside the door for the New Balance shoes. The Wellston Center would sell them to college track teams, high school students and senior citizens. It would make enough money to buy food for the pantry, which is generally open on Tuesday and Wednesday mornings, from 7:30 a.m. to 10 a.m.

For whatever reason — Diemer said there was little communication from New Balance — the shoe donations ended. So the center is suddenly in need of donors.

Making matters worse, sometime last year, before Diemer took over, the center didn’t order from the for three months in a row, which dropped it onto a waiting list to access the food bank. For now, Diemer is buying about $3,000 in food every week from an Aldi grocery store to supply the pantry.

That makes the donations — the ones not showing up in the mail — critical.

“In a time of need, I need the mail here more than ever,� Diemer said.

He’s visited the Wellston post office — which is just a series of post-office boxes these days — and the post office on Natural Bridge Road to explain his problem, but he hasn’t received any answers.

“Unfortunately, it looks like the Natural Bridge Post Office can only find us on certain days, and no one knows where the mail ends up on the other days,� Ann Schutzius told me.

When I visited the Wellston Center last week, Diemer had on his desk a folder of mail that had been delivered by mistake a day earlier. The mail belonged to somebody down the street. He took it back to the post office — and the same mail was delivered to the Wellston Center again the next day.

U.S. Postal Service spokeswoman Tara Jarrett asked me to send pictures of mail that had been returned. She said somebody from the USPS would look into it. She emailed me a statement apologizing for the “inconvenience this has caused the customer,� adding that, “The Postal Service will reach out to the customer to resolve their delivery issues.�

Wellston is hardly the only place in ÃÛÑ¿´«Ã½ having problems with the USPS. In February, Congresswoman Cori Bush, a ÃÛÑ¿´«Ã½ Democrat, to Postmaster General Louis DeJoy about “ongoing, significant and widespread delays to mail deliveryâ€� in the region. Bush demanded “immediate action.â€�

A couple of months later, U.S. Sen. Josh Hawley, a Missouri Republican, to the inspector general of the post office and demanded an audit of operations in the city of ÃÛÑ¿´«Ã½, and ÃÛÑ¿´«Ã½ and St. Charles counties.

“For some constituents, the result has been routine delivery delays, while others have not received deliveries at all,� Hawley wrote.

The pantry is particularly busy in the summer serving children in the area, many of whom qualify for food programs when they are in school. In previous years, that wasn’t a problem because the shoe revenue was enough to cover the pantry’s needs. Diemer and his volunteers are now trying to get word out that a place Ann Schutzius calls the area’s “best kept secret� needs extra help.

When the check from her deceased father didn’t arrive after two tries, Ann asked her mother to have the check sent to her home instead. Last week, Ann hand-delivered it to the Wellston Center. The food pantry will be well-stocked for the next few weeks. There will be money for food and money to fill backpacks for elementary students with fall school supplies.

But what happens next is up to the generosity of strangers — and the post office’s ability to deliver the mail.