Photograph by Jacqueline Ramseyer

Delivered with a Smile: Myra Wilson, finance and box clerk at the Heritage Village post office in Campbell, has worked at the station for 15 years.




Public Citizen

Wilson gives post office stamp of approval

By Erin Mayes

It's a nerve-wracking time for post offices around the nation, but Myra Wilson, a finance and box clerk at the Heritage Village Station in Campbell, says she can't imagine anything terrible happening where she works.

Like most post offices in the United States, Wilson and her co-workers have donned latex gloves and face masks in response to several incidents of anthrax bacteria contamination in the U.S. mail on the East Coast. Wilson says she and many of her co-workers have found it difficult to efficiently handle mail and make change while wearing the gloves, so most of them have stopped wearing the protective gear. However, machine clerks, who are at the highest risk, still wear the gloves and face masks.

The tiny post office at 51 E. Campbell Ave. is much smaller than many post offices in the Bay Area, and Wilson says that's part of the reason she likes working there.

"People will come in, and they run into people that they know," she says. "I just love it because it's so hometowny."

Wilson, 49, has been sorting and boxing mail, stocking vending machines, ordering stamps and making sure the front window is stocked since the Campbell office opened in June 1986. Before that, she worked for the station on Latimer Avenue for six years and another office in San Jose for two years.

Her husband, who passed away a year and a half ago, was a mail carrier in Campbell for 32 years before he retired. Wilson met him at a doughnut shop on Winchester Avenue when she was only 16. She'd moved to the Bay Area from Oklahoma at age 4, when her grandparents owned a home on Winchester Avenue, which at the time was only a two-lane road surrounded by orchards. She's lived in Campbell for about 30 years.

Wilson has one son, Fred, 28, who moved back home after his father passed away, joining her and Shelby, Wilson's 15-year-old mixed chihuahua and mini pincer.

While it might be a bit much to say that postal work is in her blood, Wilson can recall two relatives who have served as postal employees--one of her cousins in Dallas, Texas, worked at a post office, and one of her uncles was a rural carrier, delivering mail to homes off the beaten path.

Wilson is now involved with the Campbell Women's Country Club. She joined last year when the group was putting together baskets for women at a battered women's shelter.

Wilson plans to retire in about seven years and travel with her sister.

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