After 15 years at post office, Buck retires – with many friends

A bright spot at the Maricopa post office has dimmed.

The clerk better known as “Buck” stamped his retirement on a 15-year career behind the counter, where he engaged — and delighted — his customers with an easy-going and pleasant manner. His last day was May 28.

Randy Brawner, 60, started out as a letter carrier for three months and then became a full-time clerk, selling stamps and prepping letters and packages for delivery. (A first-class stamp cost 37 cents in 2006; it’s now 55 cents.) Like his family and friends, the people conducting business at the post office got to know the man who goes by Buck.

“He’s really nice,” said Sheryl Jackson as she left the post office after a recent visit. “He’s funny and keeps everything in perspective.”

The Brawners moved to Maricopa in 2003 from Charleston, South Carolina, after Buck retired after 21 years in the military.

“We kind of wanted to live in a smaller town,” he said. “We didn’t want to live in Chandler.”

They came down the road and decided to make a home here. He and Gina have been married 27 years and have four children — three on her side and one together — and two grandchildren. They live in Rancho El Dorado.

He worked at a Home Depot in Tempe for 18 months, but when he saw all the houses going up for sale in Maricopa in the mid-2000s, he thought to himself, “These guys (at the post office) are going to need some help.”

He took a couple of postal service tests and received offers for jobs in Wickenberg and Tempe, but turned them down. The third job offer was the one he was holding out for: letter carrier in Maricopa. He had really wanted to work in the city.

When he moved behind the counter as a clerk three months later, Buck was following in the footsteps of his father, who retired after 30 years as a window clerk at a post office in Iowa.

A NICE SMILE

“When I first took it over, there were maybe 4,000 people in town,” Brawner said. “And then, Boom! they just started building, building, building.”

But the post office hasn’t kept pace with that growth, he said, a sentiment shared by
many Maricopans. “It’s really busy now. I keep telling the postmaster, ‘You’re going to have to do something.’”

The USPS recently extended a lease on the main post office on West Hathaway Avenue,
Brawner said.

Buck’s weekday routine is well-honed. He arrives at the post office at 7:50 a.m. and clocks in 10 minutes later. He opens the store, gets the computers going and tends to the mail chute, which is typically jammed full. Then he checks on the American flag out front. At 8:30, he is behind the counter — the window all the way to the right — to “meet and greet” customers, as he called it.

Today, as in years past, some are new residents. He said two or three customers a day
tell him they are new in town.

“He has a fun personality and nice smile,” said Cindy Wright, who said she mails packages at the post office just about every day. “He is going to be missed very much.”

Buck is on a first-name basis with many of his customers.

“There’s not too many I don’t know,” he said.

Buck, his wife remembered, once gave out his number to a random customer, who later called him about going on vacation together.

People enjoy his conversation so much they stop him in the supermarket to chat. In the
beginning, Gina would wait politely for those conversations to end before resuming their
shopping.

“She doesn’t wait anymore,” Buck said with a laugh. “I get accused of talking a lot.”

“It is crazy,” Gina added. “Everybody knows his name.”

‘BUCK’ STUCK

Before joining the post office, Brawner spent two-plus memorable decades in the U.S. Air
Force.

Arriving in Germany early in his military career, his sponsor took one look at him and
said, “You look like a Buck.”

The name stuck.

In 1994, while stationed in Charleston, Buck and 70 of his fellow airmen were brought in one day. Each was given an M-16 rifle and told to get on a plane — destination undisclosed. The servicemen landed in Spain, but were in the air again an hour later, still uncertain where they were headed.

Buck and his fellow airmen landed in the middle of the Rwandan Civil War, where they
took up residence at a bombed-out airport in Kigali and stayed for a month as planes
landed about every 15 minutes as part of a humanitarian mission, he recalled.

Gina learned Buck was in Rwanda by watching CNN. In 1994, their first year of
marriage, she said her husband was on missions for about 300 days.

In the late 1980s, he was part of a five-man detail that handled distinguished visitors at
Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland. During George H.W. Bush’s term, he would don his
dress blues to salute the president as he boarded Air Force One.

He had the opportunity to meet a number of political luminaries, including Queen Elizabeth II, Margaret Thatcher, prime minister of the United Kingdom and Mikhail Gorbachev, the last leader of the Soviet Union.

MORE GOLF, TRAVEL AHEAD

Now, Buck the retiree will have more time to spend on leisure — golf, fishing and family.

While he will continue to run a house-watching business, he will work on his 7 handicap with his golf buddies at The Duke and Southern Dunes courses. Gina and their son Ryan also hit the little ball.

The Brawners have been visiting Homer, Alaska for the past five years, since Ryan opened a restaurant there.

In July, they will head north for another visit, this time for three months. Part of his time
will be spent trying to hook king salmon and other fish on the Kenai River, the most popular sport-fishing destination in Alaska.

Longer trips with family and friends are ahead, he said.

A send-off for Buck Brawner was held May 22 at Pacana Park to give the community an opportunity to show gratitude to the man who always had a smile or a kind word at the post office. A convoy of mail truck drivers circled through the park to salute their colleague.

The memories of his interactions with customers, especially the new residents in town,
is what he will treasure most.

“I’m usually the first one they meet. I am going to miss it.”

RANDY “BUCK” BRAWNER

Age: 60

Maricopan since: 2003

Neighborhood: Rancho El Dorado

Occupation: Just-about-retired postal clerk at Maricopa post office and retired Air Force

Family: Wife Gina, four children and two grandchildren

Best golf shot: A double-eagle on a course in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. On his second shot on a par-5, he hit a 3-wood from 220 yards into the cup.

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This story appears in the June issue of InMaricopa magazine.