8/2/17 CHICAGO (CBS) – A Melrose Park letter carrier is about to retire after 60 years on the job – one of the longest-serving postal workers in history.
83-year-old Garland Gralow remembers the day he was hired.
“Could you start tomorrow? – just like that – yeah okay,” Gralow remembered.
Gralow started working for the United States Postal Service in 1957. He has been walking the same route on 25th Avenue ever since, though he said it used to be a lot longer.
He was eligible for retirement in 1988. Now that it is getting closer, he said he is looking forward to relaxing.
Source: One Of The Longest-Serving Postal Workers Retires After 60 Years « CBS Chicago
he could not afford to retire on this low pay and crummy 1% yearly raise in Chicago Metro. (or SFO, DFW, NYC, BOS, LAX etc) Rolando’s contract most likely made him to ill to carry on. chewey.com offers discounts on cat food!
Congratulations and best wishes on your retirement! Totally amazing!
That’s amazing to say the least! Congratulations & best wished in your retirement!
how many sick hours did he leave?I hope zero, but I doubt that!
That is a truly amazing story, and on the same route!!! That is a person who loved his job, and didn’t let the negativity in today’s workforce rub off on him., I obviously don’t know him bet I bet he was a great carrier!
Good luck and enjoy your retirement..Hope and pray that you stay healthy as you enjoy i your retirement with friends and family.
outstanding!
Way to go Mr Garland, in my book you’re a living legend
HE HE WHO WHO
tell that stupid news anchor its neither rain, sleet, snow, nor gloom of night. geez…didnt anyone tell her the correct motto?!
He’s a real Whipper Snapper, good luck in the future
God bless, but he’s nuts
Well said! I have the same time as a window clerk with the USPS, my road will soon end. Best wishes!
Well, this certainly makes my time with the USPS also as a city carrier a joke with 32 +years! But congratulations are certainly in order. Some snarky types might wonder why anybody would do this work for 60 years, but there are people out there who truly love to work, and Mr. Gralow comes from a time when it was an honor to be a letter carrier, and postmen were not just USPS or when he started, Postal Department employees – they became fixtures on their routes and were accepted as part of the neighborhoods where they served.
I was lucky enough to be part of that era, albeit toward the end as DPS and automation and a disastrous turn toward dependence on numbers games and a huge indifference toward real public service took over. It didn’t effect my performance, as I was never one to be threatened and take it from anybody, but there is a big line between the old school and what we have today, and in honor of Mr. Gralow I won’t get into it, as readers here already know what’s going on.
I hope you have a long and healthy retirement, Mr. Gralow, and there are a lot of customers out there on 25th Street who are fortunate to have had you for their mailman. Best of luck to you and your family.
Manual Clerk Angelo T from Mid-Island, PD&C 117/119 beat him by 2 years when he retired 9 years ago and was in the first wave at Omaha Beach in the Battle of Normandy WW2(combat wounded and add another 2 years military time to the 62)……….what did the scummers do when he retired…….typical of Mid-Island….nothing! but boy do they roll out the red carpet when one of the criminal mismanaging bureaucrats retire! rewarding criminals….how unamerican can you get!
UPS, FDX, AMZN, WMT, TGT…….all going to deliver and put this Postal Circus on life support…….when will Congress pull the plug?
I hope that isn’t typical everywhere. I had a very nice send off from both management and the union I served as either steward or president, changing tasks with one other good friend to give us both some stress relief here and there, although because we were long timers we were both equally experienced and the titles were merely cosmetic. I considered myself lucky but I do know there are tons of offices out there populated by horrible people on both sides of the aisle – corrupt idiotic and hate filled supervisors and management who pulled the shit you described, push drugs and steal money from their offices but still think they’re on higher moral ground, and craft people who wouldn’t work an honest day in their lives, screw fellow employees by having to be “helped” every day and milk their routes for all they’re worth, or handle less box section, LCM, parcels, etc. and letting co-workers take up the slack.
And let us not forget 204-B’s eager to kiss management’s asses or those who want to manage. Some are okay, I admit, but many turn snitch and rat out fellow craft workers to try to impress managers for every little thing they see. One of the absolute worst was my T-6 and connected to higher level management out the wazoo. This person deliberately mishandled mail, sometimes mangled it and bragged about it and told us he would misdeliver mail just to make it harder on the regular who had to clean up his shit. We told our PM but I guess connections are everything because he became a goddamn plant manager!!!!!
I just hope other retiring craft people get the respect and nice sendoffs they deserve. Nothing is more insulting than a desk jockey like our PMG for example who worked NINE WHOLE GRUELING MONTHS as a city carrier and “couldn’t do it anymore” before latching on to Pat Donahoe like a lamprey all the way to the top where she is making devastating decisions, lying out her ass to Congress and customers, and ignoring contracts with all four unions, preferring instead to create a massive backlog of lawsuits that will allow management to continue unimpeded for years before they have to do anything. Cost of doing business, I guess. Glad I’m out of there, but my friends aren’t, and I still care about the way they’re treated.
GOOD LUCK AND GOD BLESS YOU