NEWBURYPORT — Despite 35 years of work for the U.S. Postal Service, Newburyport Postmaster Leo "Scott" Murray insists his success isn't just about himself.

It's about his late father, Leo H. Murray, who also spent decades in the Postal Service, and his late mother, Angela, who instilled a meat packer's work ethic in her son. It's about his wife, Elizabeth, and the four successful children he's raised despite constantly shifting positions within USPS. And it's about the hundreds of coworkers and employees he's had through the years that he believes makes the Postal Service so strong and so dependable.

"It's the people," said Murray, 56, from the same office where his father served as acting postmaster during the 1950s. "I've been lucky. I've worked here, I've worked in New Hampshire, in Connecticut, in Boston, I was down in D.C.; I've been blessed."

Murray was recently honored for his 35 years of service by Postal Service Massachusetts District Manager Mike Powers with a certificate and pin commemorating his work.

Born, raised and educated in Newburyport, Murray remembers first coming to his hometown post office around the age of 4 to see his dad work. With his father working so much, his mother took on the role of disciplinarian when she wasn't working as a meat packer.

"She didn't have to work, but it was just her work ethic," Murray said.

All these years later, people who work with Murray can easily pick up the hard-working values that came from the time when Newburyport was a mostly blue-collar community.

"He's one of my best postmasters," said Nick Francescucci, the post office operations manager for Eastern Massachusetts and one of the people to whom Murray reports. "He's committed himself to working 12 hours a day, six or even seven days a week. Sometimes I just have to tell him to go home."

Murray's held many positions of prominence in the Northeast region of Postal Service. The nearly six years he's spent in charge of Newburyport's mail is one of the longest stretches he's stayed in one position during his career, and he's had to adapt to a myriad of changes in the Postal Service during his tenure.

After working in the Andover post office for a summer job, Murray took his first full-time position in 1974 as a clerk/carrier in Haverhill, and quickly moved up into his first managerial position in Prides Crossing four years later.

"In a small office, you can learn the business," said Murray of that experience. "You're sorting mail, but you're doing it while learning the financial aspect and the managerial part."

From there, Murray bounced around from spot to spot like a letter mailed from one coast to the other. He went back to Haverhill where he was in charge of more than $1 million worth of stamps. He was assistant postmaster in Beverly, then managed in Salem, N.H., and then was responsible for all city deliveries and the 165 mail routes in Manchester, N.H.

Murray came back to his home state to serve as delivery manager of the Middlesex/Essex (now Massachusetts) District, and after briefly working in Wakefield, the position of Newburyport postmaster opened up. The chance to return to his hometown was one he could not pass up.

Murray will do whatever he can to make postal customers in Newburyport satisfied with the service they deserve.

"People will call me up after something like a mail carrier forgot a letter or didn't see it," he said. "I'll say, 'Where are you?' They'll say 'I'm up on North Atkinson Street.' 'I'll be right there.' They'll say, 'Oh, you don't have to.' But that's my job. I take pride in my job, and my employees do too."

"There's never any 'No, I can't do it' from him," said Francescucci. "Sometimes we give them impossible tasks, and he'll be the first one to stand up in a meeting to say, 'Yes, we can do this.'"

His time with the Postal Service has seen a transformation away from the tedium of manual labor toward a more automated system that works for both worker and customer alike. Gone are the days when 50 clerks worked in Murray's Haverhill office to sort hundreds of pieces of mail manually every night.

"We'd start at 3 o'clock in the morning and hopefully be done at 9 o'clock or the postmaster would be saying to me, 'Why not?'" he said. "Now we have a machine that does that volume. Where we've come from is amazing."

But what hasn't changed for Murray is the commitment to excellence that he's tried to embody and instill in all of his workers.

"I'm very proud of the people that work for me," he said. "They really care about their jobs and their community and about people. That's one thing I'm proudest of, the accomplishments of my employees and how committed they are to their jobs."

It has been an especially cruel winter for the Postal Service given the unpredictable weather and frequent big storms. But Murray's group of intrepid workers never falter in even the harshest of conditions. Murray cites the responsibility of ensuring all his employees have everything they need to do their best as one of the most important parts of his job.

He recalls as a carrier being stranded one winter night and having to wait hours for someone to come to his aid. Murray doesn't want the same thing to happen to anyone that works for him.

"If we have a snowstorm, and we have about 18,000 deliveries in Newburyport, Salisbury and Newbury, and if we have 50 deliveries that aren't made, that's a lot," he said. "It shows the commitment of the employees to their customers. When there's a snowstorm, I don't lose a wink of sleep because I know they're coming to work."