At 79, a Minnesota mail carrier calls it quits

With just two sentences on Friday, Ray Lund captured life.

“When I’m looking at it from my perspective, it seems short,” he said. “Looking at it from your way, holy smokes, that seems like a long time.”

For fifty-six years, Lund has sorted and carried the mail for the residents of St. Cloud, the St. Cloud Times reports.

He’s 79 years old — he’ll be 80 this summer — and still working, or, at last, he was until the end of the week.

His supervisors seemed to suggest that when he goes, an approach to working will go with him.

He started at a time when people took an unapologetic pride in their job and the quality with which they performed it. He still embodies that work ethic, along with a dedication to his country, said Donna Morgel, his supervisor.

She’s a relative newcomer, having worked with Ray for only 29 years.

“Long ago people cared more about their job and the customer. He’s just customer-driven,” she said. “They are upset that he’s leaving because he just goes above and beyond.”

He also remembers the people along his route, the paper says. The brothers that went off to the NFL. The joke writer for Rodney Dangerfield.

They held a party for him at the Post Office on Friday. But apparently he couldn’t stay for the whole thing.

He had mail to deliver.