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Friday's Internet Edition, November 21, 2008.
Herald Postmaster trades mailroom for golf course
Kelley retires after 35 years with USPS
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Dan Kelley hands over the reins of the Herald Post Office upon his retirement, after 15 years as postmaster, to temporary officer in charge Marcus Buelna.
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By Rachael Ackerman
Herald Editor
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If you ask where Herald Postmaster Dan Kelley is these days, the answer will be, hitting the green, as the postal veteran of 35 years has retired for a life sunshine and golf in the dry heat of Arizona.
With the Herald Post Office for the past 15 years, Kelley followed his father’s footsteps into the United States Postal Service after the lift of a hiring freeze in the ’70s opened the door to new USPS positions.
Born in Tacoma, Wash., the Kelley family first came to California to live in Patterson when Kelley was just three years old. From there, the family moved to Stockton where Kelley graduated from Stagg High School in 1971.
“I was in college at Stanislaus State studying business, not really planning on going into the postal service,” said Kelley. “My dad, who worked in the finance department of the postal service for 24 years before retiring, came to me though and said there would be some great positions opening and that I should take the Postal Service Exam, so I did.”
Scoring a 93 percent on the federal postal service entrance exam, Kelley was offered one of the first jobs opened after the freeze.
Kelley was first hired as a postal clerk at the main post office on West Lane in Stockton in 1973, a position Kelley said helped him learn postal law and procedure very well, very quickly.
“We were the main sorting office for all of the mail going across the United States,” said Kelley. “We were responsible for sorting everything for every state, and mail was going everywhere.”
A daunting task in today’s automated postal world, when Kelley first started sorting mail there were no machines to assist. It was all done by hand, which led to what Kelley said was one of the most exciting historic eras in postal history.
For 10 years Kelley worked as a clerk/window clerk both behind the scenes and with the public until 1983 when he became one of the first address/information systems analysts in what was the beginning of new modernized postal system.
“Zip Plus Four,” said Kelley. “We already had the five digit zip code system, but with Zip Plus Four, we were able to get the sort down to the street and address where mail should be delivered, so mail carriers could just pick up the mail and deliver it. We were the brains behind the automated equipment. We put the information in that had to be sorted.”
According to Kelley, getting the Zip Plus Four system online required hours of driving each and every neighborhood in every city to confirm that each of the address ranges in the delivery area was good.
“It was constant, and still is, maintenance,” said Kelley. “Every time a new apartment complex or business is added, it has to be included throughout time.”
Kelley said the time working on the Zip Plus Four, and the team he worked with, made that era in the postal service one of the most exciting and rewarding, especially when they traveled to Washington, D.C. to unveil the new zip code system to the nation.
“Think back to the early days of mail delivery, how hard they had it,” said Kelley. “Automation of the mail system was absolutely necessary, due simply to the volume of mail received each day, and as dedicated postal employees, our commitment to getting it to you through any and all conditions safe enough to get mail delivered.”
However, Kelley’s career was far from over, and another 10 years later, in 1993, when then Postmaster General Marvin Runyon reorganized the postal service from the top down, Kelley was offered a promotion he had aimed at for a long time.
“I was offered the postmaster position in Herald and I took the job,” said Kelley. “I was now in charge of making sure the Herald postal customers got what they wanted.”
From making sure deliveries were done on time, and maintaining the mailbox services, to keeping the confidences of a small town population, Kelley soon became an integral part of the Herald community.
“It is true. You can get a glimpse of people’s lives through their mail,” said Kelley. “Often I would be told the whole story behind a piece of mail by the person receiving it, and they always counted on me to keep their confidence.”
In his 15 years of service in Herald, Kelley said he was proud to have kept the confidence of his rural customers and feels like he has been a part of so many lives, in a good way.
“Mail is very important to everybody. Just think about how many things you depend on to come in your mail,” said Kelley. “For some of the rural customers, it becomes even more important and they expect to look in the mailbox daily, and expect the mail to be there and be correct.”
A resident of Lodi for many years, Kelley soon moved to Galt to be closer to his new job.
What Kelley didn’t know was that his new job would lead to a new life, with a new wife, one he met while serving at the customer service counter at the Herald Post Office.
Herald mail carrier Linda Bowers thought Kelley and her friend Skooky (Rose) Hall would make a good match, so she arranged for the pair to meet at the Herald Day celebration in 1997.
“It was great,” said Skooky. “Here it was our first date at Herald Day and my mother was there and my sister. Here he was surrounded by all of these women and me.”
Kelley was duly impressed and the pair, who was married in 1999, has been inseparable ever since.
“We have met a lot of wonderful people working here in Herald,” said Skooky. “We feel like they will be a part of our family wherever we go.”
Ranking postal services at a 10 in importance on a scale of 1-10, Kelley said getting mail is probably one of the things in life people most often take for granted, but let the mail stop, and Kelley said the impact would be almost instantly disastrous on many levels.
“The days following 9/11 really changed everything for us,” said Kelley. “First the President shut us down for a whole day, afraid of what we could be loading on to airplanes full of people, or handling ourselves at the local level. That really caused a panic in the business world and among people dependent on fixed income checks that only come in the mail, and that was just one day.”
Since 9/11, Kelley said security at the post office has become paramount, changing the way postal customers must behave as well.
“We can’t take anything just left as a package with stamps, for example,” said Kelley. “You have to come to the counter, and if you don’t and just leave a package, we have to treat it like a potential risk. Just this year someone left a package in the vestibule and we had to call law enforcement who treated it like a bomb.”
Prior to 9/11, Kelley said the now infamous Y2K computer scare of 1999 was the last big issue to cause a wave of fear throughout the postal service.
“Nobody knew what was going to happen with the computers,” said Kelley. “We were all bringing our sleeping bags and bottled water to the post office in case everything went down.”
One common misnomer Kelley would like to correct is the belief that the post office runs on federal taxes.
“Not so,” said Kelley. “This is a free service, the daily delivery of mail. You are never charged for that service, and in spite of popular belief, we function on the cost of stamps and by sending articles through the mail, not on federal or local taxes, although mail delivery is probably one of the most important services the federal government provides every citizen.”
Leaving for the sunny skies of Arizona this Sunday, Kelley said he plans to play a lot of golf, a good bet considering the couple has purchased a home across the street from a golf course, and to get into the volunteer world, something his wife has had a hand in for years.
“Skooky worked a lot with the city beautification committee and other community events,” said Kelley. “So, I think doing some volunteer work with Skooky between rounds of golf is possible.”
Officer in Charge Marcus Buelna will temporarily run the show in Herald until a postmaster replacement for Kelley is secured.
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