Happy Trails to Good and Faithful Servants

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Irene Baber
Irene Baber

Two well-known faces in downtown Crozet retired at the end of May. Crozet Postmaster Tucker Johnson and Bank of America manager Irene Baber called time on their careers and they’ve gone on to new things.

Baber started at the bank 44 ½ years ago. “I had a few health issues and I thought it was time to get out,” she said. “I’m going to take it one day at a time. My priority is my family. I’m going to miss my customers and fellow employees. I dedicated my life to helping them.”

Bank of America has not named a replacement for her, she said, but meanwhile bank stalwart April Clark will fill in. Bank of America is trying to find the right fit for manager, Baber said. There is no local candidate for the job.

Baber started in June of 1969 in the old, temple-style bank building, which was battered down in 1981 in the name of progress. Baber finished college on a Saturday and was on the job the next Monday. “I reconciled the tellers’ work,” she explained. “I have liked bank business. My favorite thing to do is to open new accounts for young people. The next thing is mortgages for people to get a house.” She worked under longtime Crozet banker Alvin Toms for 25 years. “I did teller jobs and other tasks. Alvin was a good boss. I had no complaints. He taught me a lot about banking. About a year and half after Alvin retired, I decided to give the manager job a try.” She has stayed at it for more than 18 years.

“Banking was more personal when I started. Now it’s more commercial and competitive. I know my customers by name. We try to keep the bank on a hometown basis. These are people we know and love.” Baber admitted that she has customers whose checkbooks she has balanced, monthly, for years.

She had two big traumas during her career, her husband’s illness and death and the day her house burned down. “The support I received from the community was tremendous,” she said gratefully. “People are really great in this community on a daily basis. My coworkers are just like my family to me.”

Baber said she has no big plans. She wants to spend time with her mother and with her grandchildren. She’s helping plan a wedding for next year. “I don’t want to be tied to a desk now.”

Tucker Johnson
Tucker Johnson

Tucker Johnson is from an old Albemarle family—here since the 1840s in the Red Hill area. He was in the first class to graduate from Henley Middle School. He has worked for the U.S.P.S. more than 34 years. He was named Crozet’s postmaster in May of 1994. He was a supervisor in the Charlottesville post office at the time and didn’t actually move to the Crozet job for a few months.

It snowed twice, accumulating to 30 inches, on the weekend he started. True to the postman’s creed, he came in through snow-choked roads very early to get the office open. When he finally got in, there was no oil for the furnace, he said, and he scrounged a couple of gallons from around town. “Only one person came in the post office that day,” Johnson recalled. “I was very committed. I wasn’t going to fail.”

The wet snow that fell in March, 18 years since that first storm, forced him to cut away trees that had fallen across his driveway before he could reach the road. “Everybody scheduled to work here made it in,” he said. “I felt like I have done my job. I was ready to leave. I like to fish and I like to golf. I’ve got projects waiting around the house. I like to cook and I’ll be doing that too.”

He’s going to go to Maine with his wife this summer—where she’s from—an annual trip he usually couldn’t make. His daughter is getting married in Hawaii in September, and he’ll be there for that, too.

“I liked to do delivery and counter work. I learned early that the problem of the day would raise its head first thing in the morning, so I made it a practice to be the first person in here. I’m here before 5:30.

“When I started the post office was still across the street [in what is now the Region 10 facility]. The post office had been there since the ‘40s. We couldn’t get all the mail in the building. It had steep front steps and bad parking. You had to back out into the road. We had three rural routes. Now we have six routes. We had half the post boxes there that we have now.

“I made it my goal to get a bigger space,” Johnson recalled. “I made a home movie about Crozet post office and sent it to [U.S.P.S’s state headquarters in] Richmond. About that time, a gentleman fell backward down the post office steps. Claude Saul, who owned a grocery, Crozet Foods, was closing down his store. We worked out a long-term lease. This space can handle Crozet’s growth. We have some spare room in the back and we could add more routes. Crozet post office pays its way and it would never be considered for closure or reduced hours,” Johnson said authoritatively. “But the younger generation does not buy stamps. They do their shopping and bill paying online,” said Johnson with some worry. “But we do see an increase in parcel volumes and we’re doing “last mile” delivery for UPS and FedEx, 100 to 200 parcels a day, plus whatever comes in the door at the post office.

“The Post Office does a wonderful job considering what we are up against. Crozet averages more than 10,000 pieces of mail per day.”

“Speaking personally about Crozet Post office, our employees impress me immensely. Our carriers care about doing a good job everyday. We know all our customers by name. We really, truly care about giving excellent service and I’m proud to be associated with them.”

Scott Trice from the Charlottesville post office will serve as Crozet postmaster temporarily. The job is governed by U.S.P.S. personnel rules, and the new postmaster will likely not be a local, but probably from the central Virginia region, Johnson predicted. “There are a lot of people interested in the Crozet job,” he said.