Thom Walter, a resident of Salisbury Township’s east side, boxed his last letters and made his final package deliveries to postal patrons in Salisbury Township neighborhoods surrounding the South Mall area as he retired Aug. 31 after 40 years with the United States Postal Service.

In a note he addressed to “Dear Post Patrons and longtime friends,” Walter said, “ I have had great joy being your postman over the years, watching lives change, children grow up and meeting most all of the friendly dogs that have looked forward to their biscuits daily. It has been a great pleasure to be of service to you these last 20 years.”

While Walter said he looked forward to spending more time with his grandchildren, and “catching up on long-neglected projects” around his home, he said he will “miss the people along my route.”

Walter came to his postal career through a winding route. A native of Rittersville, East Allentown, Walter attended Dieruff High School graduating in 1970, and then went off to Kutztown University to study to be a teacher. After developing an interest in oceanography, he transferred to Florida Institute of Technology to pursue that career.

But, seeing he had a low draft number in the early 1970s and was likely to be drafted to fight in the Vietnam War, he and two buddies enlisted into the U.S. Marine Corps. He spent his enlistment serving in several California Marine Corps facilities.

After his discharge, Walter was taking courses at the Lehigh Carbon Community College and considering resuming his college education, when the United States Postal Service called and told him a long-forgotten test he had taken years before had come up for consideration and qualified him to become a postal carrier.

Having met Ranae, the woman who would become his wife, at the community college, Walter decided in 1977 to stay in the Lehigh Valley and accept the job.

He served various positions in the Allentown downtown area and worked as a utility postman, serving in the place of carriers who had rotating days off each week. During that period, Walter received a lifesaving commendation for leading a hearing-impaired woman out of her residence as a cooking fire spread inside her home.

Seeing the posting the Salisbury neighborhood was up for bid when “Red” the long-time carrier retired in 1977, Walter saw the switch as a “less stressful” alternative to his downtown Allentown assignment, and he never regretted taking the new route.

Walter said he has seen a lot of changes in the postal service over the years.

“When computers came into use in the 1990s,” he observed, “people said that would be the end of the mail system.” That did not happen, but the advent of online shopping in the past decade has led to momentous changes.

“We have been inundated with packages,” he said. “The daily boxes from Amazon and the prescription drug deliveries that have come our way have been a boom for the postal service. Lately we’ve begun to see a new phenomenon of “Amazon green bag delivery” of fresh foods.

The postal service awarded him with its “million-mile” safe driving recognition and he finds great satisfaction in driving for 40 years without a roadway mishap.

But now, he and Ranae’s two children, Tommy and Kirsten, have presented them with three grandchildren, which they will now be able to have more contact with. With a few more years before Ranae retires from St. Luke’s University Health Network pediatric department, Walter says their homestead will be able to benefit from upkeep that 10-hour work days have kept him from.

“I ‘just knew’ it was time to retire and now I’m really looking forward to this next phase of my life,” Walter said with wide smile.