HE’S a native of Rathmullan; his current post code address is in Ballybofey; but for the best part of forty-two years he has diligently and good humouredly served the public of Letterkenny and beyond from, mainly, behind the counter at the Post Office on the town’s Main Street.

Yesterday, Tommy McNaught dealt with his final patron before parcelling up his belongings and postmarking a career in which he enjoyed popularity among customers and colleagues alike.

“I’ll miss it to an extent and certainly miss the people I came in contact with and those I worked with over the years,” he said.

There may, however, he admits, be aspects of the work – changed so much since he started – that he’ll be glad to leave behind.

His schooling brought him to Milford Tech and it was there that the seed was sown of a career in the Post Office.

“All these Civil Service exams came through at the Tech in Milford, like a clerical assistant in the Post Office and a Trainee Technician at the P&T back in the day and I applied.

“The previous September I had got the trainee technicians post and I started in Sligo just beyond my 17th birthday. And I stayed in that for one day and came home.

“The auld man should have kicked me up the road again and told me to get back there when there were people who would have given their high teeth for the job.”

Tommy subsequently worked for eight months with his father, Tony, who was a carpenter by trade.

When an opening came up in the Post Office he commenced training in Cavan. “I was like a wee spoiled child in Cavan as well and was going to chuck it. But I got into Letterkenny a week later and Niall O’Donnell trained me.”

After that he was posted off to Claremorris for two weeks in July 1981. “I was going to jack it again but there was another trainee in Monaghan and we managed to do a swap which was unheard of for temporary people. So I was in Monaghan then on the direct bus route!.”

This time his staying power endured and he was there until February 1986, and he’s been in Letterkenny since then. “Joe Marley just arrived about six weeks before me and Danny Mailey had come before that. We were all around the one time.”

They were all on a waiting list for a permanent post. “Sean McGlinchey from the Back Road was on the waiting list and he was in Dundalk at the time. He got Lifford then. But most of us wanted to get back to Letterkenny including me. I was a bit of a home bird.” A bird that didn’t want to fly too far from the nest.

Initially, however, when he did return to Letterkenny, Tommy had some measure of regrets after leaving Monaghan.

But tragedy struck the family when his father collapsed on a Friday afternoon and died at the age of 64. And he was content to remain on in Letterkenny and be with his mother, Etta, who subsequently passed away in 2020.

When he first started in the Post Office on Main Street, Tommy Gillen was the Post Master and the other senior employees included Jim Toner, Kevin Toner, Niall O’Donnell and Jim Ferry. “They were all the senior men, we were very much the juniors and knew our place.”

But juniors or seniors, nothing prepared them for that fateful day when rugby fans were gathered around their television sets watching the World Cup Final in 1997. “At seven minutes past nine that Saturday morning, two boys hopped off a motorbike outside and came into the Post Office, one behind the counter and one in front of the counter ready to rob the place.

“Myself and Joe Marley were on that morning. The boy beside me appeared to be armed – he certainly had something in his hand.”

A startled customer was also present at the time of the incident. “I gave the robber nothing but afterwards it was frowned upon by the hierarchy who considered I had put the customers’ lives at risk. God rest Tadgh Culbert who joked afterwards to me: “you should have put two or three thousand down your sock and said nothing!’ “.

Tommy remembers reading about people who had been given awards for preventing such robberies. “With me, it was the complete opposite.”

But the good far outweighed the bad where his job in the Post Office was concerned. “I’m so grateful to all those people who I came into contact with over the years, particularly the elderly customers. I have great respect for the older generation – they came through harder times than us. I always treated everybody with courtesy but especially the seniors.

“They’d be in on a Friday and might not have seen anybody all week so it was always good to chat with them and engage in some banter. That might have been their only social contact.”

His 42 year career in the Post Office – “I always say the heaviest thing I lifted was a pen!” – brought him out from behind the counter to work in the area of T.V. licences and looking after the transport fleet for a period. “But then everything was decentralised around about the early 2000’s and we were back behind the counter again.”

Tommy had little, or no, ambitions to scale the promotion ladder into management. “I was kind of in a wee cocoon and was quite happy where I was. People might call it lack of ambition but I had no real aspirations about going higher. And when I look back on my career, I have no regrets.”

So now that retirement has put the final stamp on his Post Office career, has he any plans?

“Well, I play a bit of pitch and putt and I might start playing the big golf as they say. I’m left handed so I got a set of left handed golf clubs from a fellow in Super Valu in Ballybofey about five years ago but they’ve hardly been out of the bag!.”

He and his wife, Siobhan – a native of Ballybofey where the couple reside – may also get out more to walk their Jack Russell dog, Princess. “And I do a bit of cycling and swimming for leisure.”

He’ll also amble along to Finn Park on a Friday night to watch Finn Harps – a season ticket holder who conveniently lives about a mile from the ground.

His Post Office colleagues and his family and friends, meanwhile, gathered in the Station House Hotel on Saturday night for his official retirement function.

It was the last post so to speak – and tributes have been duly paid along with many more – during this interview his phone hardly stopped ringing – both yesterday and in the preceding days as well wishers, many of whom were around on April 21st,1981, when he started his career, offered their congratulations to the popular, and now former, An Post employee.