June 2, 2004
Clerk handles his last letter
Donahue retires after 32 years with TC Post Office
By Carol South
Herald contributing writer
John Donahue rode off into the retirement sunset Friday.
Since 1973, Donahue has worked as a clerk at the United States Post Office's downtown facility. He spent all but six weeks of his career downtown, heading to the Barlow facility for that short time about 15 years ago.
Last Friday afternoon, he greeted his last customer, handled his last piece of mail as an employee and bid co-workers a fond farewell.
Ready to share his golden years with his wife, Sue, he admits to being slightly apprehensive about the looming lack of structure.
"I'll probably miss just coming in and doing the routine I've been doing for 30 years," said Donahue, who has two grown daughters. "I opened the window every morning and 25-30 people would come in to pick up their mail. Most customers are very polite, they know what they want."
A quiet, low-key family man, Donahue said golf is not in his future, despite some of his co-workers' passion for the sport.
"Some of the guys like to golf but that's too frustrating for me," he noted.
Florida is not in the cards at this point, either, though the family does not rule out making short trips.
"I've always kind of liked the change of seasons and the winters haven't been so bad for the past ten years," Donahue said. "Probably the longest vacation I've ever taken is two weeks at a time, so I think the first few weeks will feel like a vacation
Donahue grew up on 20 acres just west of Hannah, about 18 miles south of Kingsley. He attended Kingsley High School long before the current population boom: his class of 1964 had 27 members.
"We were a small Class D school at the time," he recalled.
While his family did not farm, his neighbors had large farms and that sparked his interest in agriculture. After high school, he attended the Michigan State University short course in agriculture, working two summers at a large dairy farm in Schwartz Creek to master his trade.
"They had 400-500 cows, which now is not that big of a farm," Donahue said.
With the United States' growing involvement in Vietnam, Donahue decided to volunteer, figuring he would be drafted anyway. He served two years in the Army, including just under a year in Vietnam as part of a mortar platoon.
"My first year was NCO [non-commissioned officer] schooling and then I went to Vietnam," said Donahue, who is a member of the American Legion. "I went as an E5 and was promoted to sergeant E6 while there."
After discharge, he found work on a farm in Freemont where he met his future bride. He moved to Traverse City and began working at the Post Office in July of 1973. Eleven months later, he and Sue married and the decades at the Post Office began rolling away, almost unnoticed.
"For the most part it's been quite enjoyable," Donahue said. "The 32 years almost went by fast; when you start it seems like 30 years will never come, then it's gone."
Donahue's career spans an era of intense technical changes at the United States Postal Service. When he came on board in Traverse City, the facility handled 11 rural and 19 city routes. Now, with a second zip code in town, the downtown post office has approximately 35 rural and 36 city routes. In addition, the Barlow facility and the mail processing plant on Garfield were built to handle the area's increasing population.
"We used to have everything here," he recalled. "Probably the biggest change, especially in the last 20 years, has been automation. Now a machine reads the address and nobody has to read it, it already comes to the carrier sorted in bar code sequence."