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Show Jack Green Officially Leaves Post Office after 40 Years December 28 marks the end of an era at the Park City Post Office as John "Jack" Green Jr. officially retires after 40 years of service. Mr. Green, who is also Park City Mayor, has been postmater for 25 years, taking over that position from his father John Sr., who was postmaster starting start-ing in 1936. "I've really enjoyed it," said the mayor of his tenure at the post office. "Meeting all the people has made it better than just a job." Born in Salt Lake and moving to Park City at age 10. Green told the Record the post office has tended to mirror the boom and bust Park City economy over the years (see related re-lated story this page). "Things continue to change." said Green who noted the type of mail handled by the post office of-fice is different today than 15 years ago. For instance, the mayor said the post office used to handle a much higher volume of catalogs and advertising circulars. "Everybody in Park City used to order from Montgomery Ward.. we used to distribute 1 ,500 catalogues." In recent years. Green also noted a decrease in the number of Christmas cards due to the increased in-creased cost of mailing, and less parcel post because of competition competi-tion from independent carriers like United Parcel. The nationwide push to mechanize the Postal Service has also resulted in changes locally. lo-cally. All Park City mail is now trucked to Salt Lake for cancelling cancel-ling by a large machine there, resulting, said Green, in somewhat some-what of a "loss of identity" of the local office. The transition of Park City from a close-knit mining town to a resort town, with a more transient tran-sient population, has also meant changes at the post office. "Up until five or six years ago we knew everybody in town, now it sometimes seems we don't know anybody," observed the mayor. And what that has meant, he continued, is a large volume of General Delivery mail, much of which must be forwarded or returned. re-turned. Looking to the future, the former postmaster also sees considerable change in the way mail is delivered, with "either vehicle or expanded contract route delivery within the next six months." He said the most likely area to receive home delivery first would be Park Meadows and Holiday Ranch. "I think eventually we will have city delivery here in town, and probably a type of vehicle delivery in the other parts of town." The main reason, said Green, was that the post office, even with a major expansion in 1975, has run out of post office boxes. "We've got 2,000 boxes now and there's no more room... that's it." In an interview, Green told the Record that his decision to take the post office civil service exam was born mostly out of the economic hard times of the late 1930's. At one time Green, who worked as a typesetter for the Park Record and was a correspondent corres-pondent for the Salt Lake Tribune Tri-bune for 12 years, said he considered con-sidered going into journalism. Low pay, he said, convinced him otherwise, although he did major in journalism while attending at-tending college in California. Green also noted that he also had thoughts of becoming an attorney, at-torney, but the fact that all three lawyers in Park City "were starving star-ving at the time" persuaded him against tht option. Besides being mayor. Green has also served for 20 years on the Park City School Board, was a member of the city council, and the planning commission. |