Two days, two obituaries

Over the weekend I saw obituaries of two men I briefly worked with in the 1970s.

I met them both at the school district warehouse where I worked at the time. Mike I met first, in 1976. I worked with him for a couple of months. He was just out of the Army after having a career that had lasted since the Korean War. He had told us he was just waiting until the Postal Service took him on. Sure enough, he got the call and went to work for the USPS, never to be seen again by me until his obituary appeared. I notice it says he spent 18½ years as a letter carrier.

The other, Bernie, I met when he was hired to be our supervisor. I believe Bernie had a problem with supervising guys in their twenties, which is what we all were in those days. Being young we were profane. Bernie was a religious person, as it says in his obituary. I thought he was a churchgoing person at the time, based on his reaction to said profanity. Bernie was memorable to me because he got the supervisor job I had applied for and I was somewhat indignant at being assigned to train him. He only worked for three days before quitting. He walked off the job, probably because our lack of civility offended him.

There may not have been another person like me who saw both of these obituaries, whose path both of those men crossed. Of the hundreds of people I worked with in my 45 years on various jobs, these two, whom I worked with very briefly decades ago, stuck out in my mind. Then I saw their obituaries at the same time. I take note of coincidences when they happen.