Returned To Sender Retired Grays River Postmaster Finally Kicks Postal Service Out Of Her Home

How do you evict the federal government?

You don’t. You just wait - and hope it goes away.

After six years of waiting and hoping the U.S. Postal Service would clear out of her Grays River home, 81-year-old Jean Calhoun is about to end her decades-old relationship with the government.

Since her retirement in 1989, the former postmaster has leased space and post office boxes to the Postal Service in her home on State Route 4. When she retired as Grays River’s postmaster, she put the government agency on notice, saying it had eight months to vacate her home.

Maybe the Postal Service thought she meant eight years.

“I thought eight months would be ample time,” said Calhoun, who also operates a Public Utility District payment center out of her home.

The Postal Service has finally decided to combine the Grays River and Rosburg post offices in a modular building in Rosburg, so Calhoun won’t have to lease the space.

Calhoun served as postmaster in Grays River for 36 years. She got the job when the former postmaster resigned and closed the store where the post office had been.

Calhoun and her husband, who died in 1963, bought a house along the highway and the attached garage became the post office.

According to David Ellis, a Postal Service spokesman in Portland, the post offices are being combined “because of severe space limitations” in the current post offices.

Calhoun’s been suffering from space limitations of her own.

“Things are getting pretty crowded,” she said. “I need that space.”

“It’s a complete mess when you deal with the government,” she said. “It gets more complicated every day.”

Calhoun’s “homey” post office has presented some interesting dilemmas for her.

“When you have it in your house, people feel they can get extra services,” she said.

She recalled the time when a customer was expecting medicine for livestock and asked Calhoun to keep the packaged vaccine in her refrigerator since he was going to be gone over the weekend.

“I did,” she said. “That’s just one of the services that makes a close-knit community. You don’t get that in a bigger town.”

“It’s been a very good experience as far as I’m concerned,” Calhoun said.

Having a post office in your house has some advantages and disadvantages, Calhoun said.

“It was separated from the house with doors, so it wasn’t like everyone was coming into your house,” she said.

Although she’s had knocks on her door as late as 10:30 p.m., Calhoun said she’s taken it all in stride.

“You just accept it with the job because people are people,” she said.

There are the people who just had to come late at night to find out if they’d gotten a package. Then there are those who have to get a book of stamps because they’re going away first thing in the morning.

“You just serve them because, after all, a job like that, you have to serve,” she said.

“They’re not doing it to be disrespectful,” she added. “They have their reasons.”