January 30, 2002
Davis delivers decades of first-class service
Karla Davis first female mail carrier to retire from Traverse City Post Office
By Carol South
Herald contributing writer
When she heads home Friday afternoon, Karla Davis will be saying goodbye to more than 1,700 weeks of a familiar routine.
Parking her mail truck at the South Airport Branch of the Traverse City Post Office for the last time, Davis will head off into the sunset of retirement after more than 33 years of service. Thirty-three years, three months and nine days - if anyone's counting.
"I'm 55 on Wednesday and eligible to retire, so I'm retiring on Friday," Davis said.
As the first female postal employee to retire from the Traverse City post office, the Interlochen resident will soon be blazing a trail to Las Vegas on an extended vacation.
"I'm going to take my time on my trip," Davis said. "After that I'd like to work with the Commission on Aging."
Easing into retirement is a stark contrast to her first turbulent days with the Postal Service as one of the first wave of female mail carriers. Davis was hired in Davenport, Iowa, on October 22, 1968.
A young women providing for her family, she was swept up in two major social changes over the next decades: the women's movement and the technological revolution. Both have impacted her daily life and her career at the Post Office.
When she began working in Iowa, she was one of just a few female mail carriers.
"In 1968, it was terrible to be a female in the post office," she recalled. "The guys didn't want us there."
Davis got that message loud and clear as day after day piled up with pranks that went beyond the practical joke.
"The men would put bricks in my bag and load it up with Reader's Digest Condensed Books," she said. "They would pull out our dividers from our cases and put them right in the bags with the mail. But what could you do? I had to take the bus back if I wanted to unload so I would just carry it."
Davis learned quickly to get tough and endured. She needed the money and the job had good benefits, crucial to a mother raising two kids on her own.
"After I proved I could take it, it got better," she said. "I learned that you don't let them give you any crap, you give it right back."
Davis moved to Traverse City in 1981 to be near family, becoming the second female mail carrier in the area. Her final route is a driving route along Garfield and South Airport Roads that includes 462 deliveries. Getting a route with a truck is a perk of her seniority, a pleasant change from the years outside in every kind of weather on walking routes.
Davis begins every day with three hours of sorting, a job that has been transformed by computers. She clearly remembers the days not so long ago when the carriers sorted everything by hand. At that time, they also wrote out each forwarding address request by hand, a tedious and exacting job now done quickly by computers.
"Everything is all computerized now, completely different," she said.
While the lure of free time and travel is strong, Davis will miss her co-workers and the people on her route.
"It gets to be a family here, I will miss most the people I work with," she said. "They are a pretty good bunch of people."
Derek Pattison, Davis' supervisor for the past year, will notice a loss next Monday, when business goes on as usual without Karla Davis.
"Karla is good, she's reliable, very efficient and always willing to help out," he said. "And she'll put me in my place when I need it."