Postal Workers Retire With 100 Years Combined Service

MyWebTimes.com reports two Ottawa, Ill. postal workers, Ronald Kotecki and Keith Rorem, started working at the local post office on the same day, Sept. 28, 1959, and retired together yesterday.

In an article by Steve Stout, the two men shared memories of their 50 years of service and talked about the changes they've witnessed.

"When we started the pay was only $2 an hour," Rorem,74, began. "And, somehow, we all made a living and survived."

Kotecki, 68, laughed and said stamps only cost four cents each in 1959 and that he truly feels, adding in inflation factors, they are even a better deal today at 44 cents each.

Stout writes, "... both men agreed the single biggest change during their long tenure was the slow elimination of mail trains which, at one time, crisscrossed the county in a constant race to make depot deliveries. Postal crews sorted mail in rocking railcars on the move."

Rorem is quoted as saying, "We used to have up to six trains a day, which workers used to toss out big pouches of mail at the depot as they came through Ottawa and then we had to attach outgoing pouches to special arms, which trains could grab without slowing down." He recalled certain rail mishaps when bags weren't caught by the speeding trains and they were run over.

"There was mail up and down the tracks we had to pick up," he told Stout.

Shown above, Keith Rorem sorts mail at the Ottawa Post Office.

To read the entire article, click here.