A beloved Ohio mailman was showered with appreciation and celebrations at nearly every home along his mail route on his last day before retirement.
A heartwarming video filmed by one of his daughters shows neighbors greeting the local postal worker, Bill Buda, with balloons, lawn signs, posters, cards and lots of cheers and hugs.
Buda, who first worked in corporate America, was a carrier for the United States Post Office for 31 years and was assigned to the same 12.2-mile route for 24 and a half of those years.
He said he watched families on the block introduce newborn babies and then watched those babies grow up and graduate from high school and college in an interview with Good Morning America.
“All of a sudden a sign shows up in the yard, ‘Congratulations, we had a boy!’, and the next thing you know it’s ‘Congratulations, I just graduated from high school!’ Then it’s, ‘Congratulations, I just graduated from college!’” Buda said.
“So those whole things, when you watch start to finish, [it’s] unforgettable. Absolutely unforgettable,” Buda said with a wide grin.
The dad of two adult daughters said many people wrongly assume the job is a “piece of cake” and don’t realize that it’s a lot more than sorting mail and delivering it to the right addresses.
“They have no idea that you’re peeking in on your elderly; you’re checking if that garage door should be shut when the kids get off of school, and for some reason, it’s open,” Buda told the program. “[If] the mail [starts] piling up, you better go contact somebody.”
In doing so, the mailman left a mark on the community. He got countless “congratulations” and “happy retirement” greetings from residents who snapped photos with him on his final day.
“It really hit me that I just went through 31 years of my life [in] every imaginable inclement weather. All the little things,” he said. “Taking a second to draw with the kids on the sidewalk with the sidewalk chalk, that’s what a neighbor’s supposed to be for.”
He called the send-off “absolutely awesome” as nearly every stop came with a warm congratulations.
“I mean, I probably could have stayed out there until midnight,” Buda joked to GMA.
Buda’s last day was made even more special as his family joined him along his route, meeting many of the people he had seen nearly every day for the past 24 and a half years.
“People will NEVER forget how you made them feel,” his daughter Alexa Buda said of her dad in the caption of the video she shared on Instagram.
The tearjerker clip has been watched nearly 700,000 times, with many viewers saying it made them cry.
Several commenters shouted out their own mail carriers’ impact on their communities. One said that when their grandparents passed away, their former and current mail carriers came to the funerals.
A few comments were from people along Buda’s own route.
“Your dad was always so kind & I’ll never forget him congratulating me when he delivered my diploma from Kent State,” one woman wrote below the video.
“Love this! Best mailman ever, our street will miss him,” another commented.
Buda said he couldn’t think of a better way to end his 31-year career.
“As soon as it was over, we — we kind of all just stared at each other and literally just said, ‘This is it,’” he said. “This was the best send-off there could be. What a way to walk off.”
