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Bowers is a mail carrier, one of 62 who deliver to 48 routes in the city of La Crosse.
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After 30 years as a United States Postal Service letter carrier in La Crosse Jay Bowers has given up his foot route for a driving route.
PETER THOMSON photo |
“We’re the face of the federal government,” he says.
For the past 16 years, his office has been route 23, a 15-square-block postage stamp nestled between Cass and Market streets under Grandad Bluff. Five days a week — in the proverbial snow, rain, heat, gloom of night — Bowers hiked upwards of 10 miles carrying letters and bills, birthday cards and catalogs to 401 front doors.
It wasn’t his neighborhood, but the gregarious postman knew his customers as well as his own neighbors. He saw children grow up and move away. He was a lifeline for elderly people who counted on his daily visits. He even saved a man’s life.
“You know every name and person in that house,” Bowers said. “You know more about people than you sometimes want to know.”
On Jan. 17, Bowers walked the route for the last time.
This week, he is adjusting to a new route on French Island, where the mailboxes are on posts and Bowers can deliver in a truck. It’s one of the most coveted routes, he said, and after 30 years of walking, he was ready for a break.
At 55, Bowers is trim and has a boyish face frosted by white hair and a close-cropped beard. He’s avoided most of the sprained ankles, wrenched knees and hip replacements that generally come with the job.
“Walking is a good thing,” he said. “What we do is too much.”
He won’t miss the aches and pains. Or the cold. But he will miss the people. “I hate to leave the people behind,” he said. “I feel terrible.”
On his last day, Bowers left a card bidding them farewell. He received dozens of cards in reply. Some contained cash. All had personal notes.
“I always enjoyed our little chats,” wrote Jane Beissel, who bought her mother’s house on Market Street about a year ago when her mother moved to a nursing home. Beissel said Bowers would always stop and talk and ask about her mother.
“He was always smiling and happy, no matter what the weather’s like,” she said.
By the time Bowers got home that last day, he already had an e-mail from one resident’s daughter who is away at college.
He’s seen a number of kids like her grow up. “You’re like a hero when they’re little,” he said. “You bring stuff every day. It’s so exciting.”
For elderly residents, a mailman can be a lifeline, the one person who comes to their door every day.
Bowers occasionally helped up people who had fallen. In 2004, he noticed one man hadn’t picked up his mail. The door was locked, and the neighbors hadn’t seen him. When firefighters broke down the door, they found the man wedged between his bed and the wall where he had been trapped for two days. Bowers was later cited by the postal service for going beyond the call of duty.
Some longtime residents on route 23 say they never knew their carrier before Bowers.
“I hadn’t noticed the other mail carrier because he didn’t ask for attention,” said Dorothy Lawrence, who’s lived on 23rd Street for about 25 years. “Jay was always very friendly. We’d see him on the street, and he’d wave.”
“We just loved him,” said Mary Ellen Gouff. “We didn’t really know the other ones.”
Bowers sometimes discovered shared interests with people on his route. Once, he peeked at a catalog of blues records he was delivering to Fern Smith. He returned the favor by turning her on to some other music catalogs he knew about.
Smith and her husband would often chat with Bowers about their shared interests — music, books, old cars and cats.
“We’ve had favorite mailmen, but none as good as Jay,” said Smith, who has lived on South 20th Street since 1973. “We’re really going to miss him.”
Bowers, who grew up in La Grange, Ill., started carrying mail during the summer when he was a student at Illinois State University. He majored in English and jokes that’s why he became “a man of letters.”
In 1978, Bowers got his first route in Skokie, Ill. He liked the work, but the pay didn’t go very far in Chicago. Bowers and his wife, Jane, had visited relatives near La Crosse, and in 1980, they found a house for sale in the town of Onalaska.
No one in Chicago could understand why he would want to leave, but he and Jane knew it was where they wanted to be.
With a daughter in college, Bowers doesn’t plan to retire for at least a few more years. But the new driving route should leave him with a little more energy for his blogs (http://oldmailman.blogspot.com, http://vintagehealthandfitness.blogspot.com), where he writes about everything from his job to his interests in fitness, food, old trucks and his barbershop quartet, the Blufftones.
“It’s either that or send endless e-mails to all my acquaintances and drive them crazy,” he said. “No one sends letters anymore — well, they do. … a lot more junk mail and a lot more packages — because people order stuff over the Internet.”
Contact reporter Chris Hubbuch at (608) 791-8217 or at chris.hubbuch@lee.net.
