Following in some big footsteps

Lots of people say they had careers “following in their father’s footsteps.”

Becky (Pounders) Nink means that literally.

Nink retired Friday from the Rockdale Post Office after running City Route Two for 22 years.

That’s the same route her late legendary father, Forrest Lee “Fuzzy” Pounders had for 30 years.

It’s been an emotional time for Nink. “People have been so nice to me when they found out I was retiring,” she said. “And then so many remember Daddy. It’s like I’ve had him with me all this time.”

‘FUZZY’—To call Forrest Lee Pounders a postal carrier is about like calling the Dallas Cowboys a “football team,” accurate but not nearly measuring how much they are treasured.

“I’ve had people tell me he would do yard work for them, get them medicine, take care of them whey they got sick,” Nink said. “Sometimes it was people who were just lonely and he knew they needed someone to talk to.”

It wasn’t rare for postal patrons to greet Pounders with broken items and ask him to fix them.” Nink recalled. “He could just about fix anything.”

“And, oh, the animals he saved and cared for,” she added. “I know people would bring him animals who were sick or abandoned. He would also give shots to pets. Daddy was just everybody’s friend and, of course, I knew that, but I’ve gotten reminded of it almost daily the last few weeks.”

CAREER—She remembers coming home from school as a child and seeing Forrest Lee Pounders in his uniform at mid-day. “He would always come home for lunch,” Nink said.

Pounders retired from the postal service in 1987 and passed away in 1996.

When Nink was hired by former Postmaster Jim Riley she, like all carriers, trained on all the routes. She was assigned her permanent route, and it indeed turned out to be permanent. It was, of course, City Route Two.

“It didn’t take long for people to find out whose daughter I was,” she laughed. “Then, of course, I began to hear all those stories about all the people he helped.”

The route is essentially everything west of the Hogan-Murray corner. Part of it is driven but a large portion is on foot. “I walked seven to eight miles a day,” she recalled. “That’s when I was literally following in my father’s steps.”

DEDICATION—And, yes, the “neither rain nor snow...” cliche about postal carriers is absolutely true.

“I have delivered the mail in all kinds of weather,” she said. “The heat didn’t really bother me that much but the cold did. Fortunately, we don’t have that many cold days here, as everyone knows.”

But one weather situation, all too common in Rockdale and Central Texas, did give her some anxious moments.

“Those would be the severe thunderstorm warnings, even some tornado warnings,” she said. “We just keep right on delivering the mail and, of course, that means we are outside.”

“That includes hail, too,” she said. “I’ve delivered mail in hailstorms.”

What about the other supposed bane of the letter carrier’s life?

“Yes, I’ve had a few encounters with dogs over the years but I’d term them more as encounters with irresponsible dog owners,” Nink said. “There have been people who would literally stand there and watch a dog attack me. Some have even told me ‘oh, he won’t hurt you’ while the dog is coming after me and not lift a finger or raise their voice to help.”

And there’s more.

“Bees,” Nink said. “They like to build around mailboxes. Once I opened a mail box and bees flew out and stung me in the face. By the time I got down the block I could feel how much my lip was swollen.”

She began to carry liquid Benadryl to immediately ward off the effects of bee stings.

STRESS—Postal delivery isn’t the relatively stress-free job it once was.

“We have to swipe our ID code at several places along our routes,” she said, “They can tell if we are late at those check-ins and they keep pretty good tabs on us the whole time.”

Would that “electronic eye” aspect have interfered with her father’s penchant for doing chores and essentially making well-being checks along his route?

“No,” she laughed. “He would just keep on helping people as long as they let him do the job.”

SILVER DOLLAR— How emotional were the last few days? “I thought about Daddy a lot,” she said. “So many people just kept reminding me of him.

Fuzzy Pounders kept silver dollars in his pocket and would hand them out when he thought the situation warranted.

“One of the home owners on the route, when he found out I was retiring, told me ‘I think about your father just about every day,” Nink said.

‘Then he reached into his his pocket and guess what he pulled out?

“Yes, it was the silver dollar Daddy had given him, all those years ago.”