Retirement: Randy Anderson

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After 40 years of passing out mail to the citizens of Emery, Randy Anderson is retiring from the Emery Post Office. He has lived in Emery his entire life. “I have been real blessed. The people of Emery are super to me. I’ve lived here my whole life except for when I was in the military. My wife Shelia and I have 10 grandchildren. I plan to spend more time with them.
“We have had an auctioneer business for the last 30 years and I raise honey bees. I plan to spend more time with the bees.
“We have two part-time employees at the post office and they will take over when I retire. The people here are just the greatest thing there is. It’s crazy, but I’ve delivered mail to people and then to their kids and now to their grandchildren. That’s three generations I’ve watched grow up while I’ve been at the post office.
“We really like to travel. We’ve already been a lot of places, but now I can see us taking off at the spur of the moment, which we couldn’t do before. We’ve traveled through Europe and fished and hunted in Alaska and Canada. We’ve been really fortunate to be able to do that. Now we can go anywhere we’d like to go.
“I really plan to just enjoy my family more. We have four children two boys and two girls. Family is really all you have in this life. Family and friends. I am going to hunt and fish and trap, mostly coyotes and bobcats,” said Anderson.
On this special last working day of July 31, Postmaster Anderson was surprised by family members and friends outside the post office where they released balloons and exchanged greetings and hugs. Olene Anderson is Randy’s mom and she just turned 92. She came to be present at the retirement. She has also been a resident of Emery her entire life.
“I am really going to miss the people. This job, it becomes part of you and I’m going to miss that. It’s been an excellent place to work. It’s been a good career. On this my last day, I’ve had a lot of calls and friends that have stopped by to visit. I really wanted to just slip out quietly,” said Anderson.
Anderson was not only the postmaster, but he played a bit of a Santa Claus each year as the children of Emery would bring in their letters to mail off to Santa. Anderson would answer each letter personally and send the reply back to the child. Not only that he would save the bundles of letters from each child and when they would graduate from high school he would return all of their letters to Santa back to them for a memory and keepsake of their childhood.
Anderson is hoping his replacements Trish Byars and Jana Jones will keep that tradition alive.
The Andersons enjoy having their grandkids come and visit. They like to travel and have been around the world, but Randy has found that out of anywhere in the world, he enjoys being right here in Emery the best. “I like to travel, but there’s no place like home,” said Anderson.