Latest to leave is Bill Patterson, a 33-year veteran

A quiet change is taking place in Tooele. It may go unnoticed by many, but for those who make a trip to the post office on a regular basis, it will be significant. With the retirement of postal workers Dennis Putnam last August, Lila Atkin this coming April, and Bill Patterson this week, the Tooele post office is bidding farewell to over 100 years of combined experience.

Patterson will spend his last day at the post office window on Thursday after serving the community for 33 years. He's seen a lot of changes during that time.

He was working for a post office in California when he made the decision to move to Tooele.

"I was working for the Pacoima Post Office in California when my family converted to the LDS church," said Patterson. "Soon after, we decided we would move to Utah. So I typed up a few resumes and we drove to all the major post offices between St. George and Logan."

After arriving back home, Bill had one resume left. He looked at a map of Utah to determine where to send the last resume.

"I saw Tooele and said to my wife, 'Wouldn't it be funny if we moved to a place called too-lee?'" Patterson said.

As it happened, Patterson received a positive response from the Tooele postmaster, who said that an opening was coming up in about two weeks and they were interested in hiring him.

At that time, there were two LDS missionaries from Tooele Valley serving in Pacoima: Jan Caldwell, from Tooele, and Ed Cole, from Grantsville. Both gave the Patterson family their views on the finer points about each of their individual towns. Ed Cole's family sweetened the deal by offering a place for the Pattersons to stay until they found a home of their own.

Upon arriving in Tooele, Patterson stopped in at the post office to find out when he should start work. The answer wasn't what he had expected. He was told that there had been an error, there was no job available and that it had all been a big misunderstanding.

With a pregnant wife, three kids and two big dogs, this wasn't the answer Patterson needed. However, the family was able to get by with a little assistance.

"With the help of Ed's parents and the church, I was hired at the Army Depot and found a place to live in Grantsville," said Patterson.

It wasn't until a year later, in 1975, that Patterson found his place at the Tooele Post Office after Loren Dow, a postal employee and volunteer fireman, was killed in a fire. Bill was subsequently hired to fill Dow's vacancy.

The post office was a much smaller operation in '75 than today, according to Patterson. At that time, there were seven city routes and two rural routes, and about 18 employees to cover them all. The mail came in and had to be hand-sorted locally. Any mis-addressed mail would often still find its way because most of the postal employees knew where everyone in town lived or received their mail.

That isn't the case today. Currently there are 12 city routes and 11 rural routes, and the mail is sorted mechanically before it even arrives in Tooele.

"Now with automation, almost all of the letters that are delivered each day are presorted before we see them," said Patterson. "Where once mis-addressed mail could find its way to the proper destination, because of automation and the amount of mail handled, mail is usually returned to sender if anything is wrong or missing in the address."

Patterson has seen some pretty unusual things come through the post office including roosters, ladybugs and crickets.

"I complained about some of the crickets getting loose once," Patterson said. "I was told it was OK because they were sterile."

There have also been a few scary incidents while serving at the post office window.

"There was a time when a person on the FBI's most wanted list received a letter in general delivery," he recalled. "We were told to give him the letter if he came in and to get his license number and to call the police."

There was also a report that an irate customer had a gun and was looking for the postmaster. Fortunately in both instances, neither of the parties showed up -- though the later episode gave Patterson an opportunity to show his humorous side.

"I wore a sign with a [sideways] arrow on it that said, 'He's the Postmaster,'" Patterson recalled.

One of the concerns Patterson has about all three of the 'old-timers' leaving is that customers won't receive the same quality service they have over the years. Since the 1980s, when the U.S. Postal Service became no longer subsidized by the U.S. Government, he feels the quality of service has deteriorated.

"We used to talk about how we were the only representatives of the federal government that most people came in contact with," said Patterson. "As a window clerk, I am the person who interacts with the customers on behalf of the postal service. The postal service is now in a profit-making, cost-effectiveness mode. Services we have provided for years are no longer considered cost-effective or are too much trouble."

Patterson used as an example the fact that the post office no longer carries tax forms for the community.

"I find it difficult to switch from giving service to making a profit," he added. "After nearly 40 years of working for the government, it's time to try something else and also spend some quality time with my wife, eight children and 12 grandkids."

Patterson said he recently came to realize how much he will miss the people who come to his window. He used a quote from a book by Robert Fulghum, "All I Really Needed To Know I Learned In Kindergarten." In one of the chapters, Fulghum tells about the loss of a barber who had cut his hair for most of his adult life: "I never saw him outside the barber shop, never met his wife or children, never sat in his home or ate a meal with him. Yet he became a terribly important fixture in my life... There's a real sense of loss in his leaving... Without realizing it, we fill important places in each other's lives."

Patterson said he felt that loss most keenly as he said goodbye to one of his customers recently.

"There is an older lady that comes in maybe three times a year, including when she heads south for the winter and when she gets back. She calls me 'Billy-boy.' This year when she came in to turn in a forward for the winter, I told her I wouldn't be there when she came back," said Patterson. "There was a certain sadness in that fact, and the beginning of my realization that I was really going to miss the people I have related to -- my friends -- over the years."