This originally appeared in the 2019 Best of Louisville issue of Louisville Magazine.
You wouldn’t guess Vincent Wilson is 60. After nearly 35 years of delivering mail, the man has no trouble scaling hills and walking who knows how many miles on his route through neighborhoods off a stretch of Lexington Road. “If it’s supposed to be walked, I walk it,” he says on a cool June morning, a bag of mail slung over his shoulder. “I do the job to perfection.”
“If the mail's coming to me, it's getting to you.”
Wilson usually completes his route in eight hours (those who sub in for him will spend nine-and-a-half), and he somehow finds time to chat with folks and look out for the neighborhood. Like the time he noticed a broken window and alerted the police. Or when he took the trash to the curb every week for an elderly woman. Or when he helped a guy move a sofa. He considers his customers his friends, and he’s gone to their parties and backyard barbecues during his 30 years on this route. “Some (people) leave me Gatorade out when it’s super hot — not you, yet,” he says to me, calling out my negligence as one of the homeowners on his route.
He was recently out for a few days with a basketball injury, and many anxious neighbors, noticing flaws in their mail, feared he had finally retired. But he plans to be on the clock for at least another year. “If the mail’s coming to me,” he says, “it’s getting to you.”
This originally appeared in the 2019 Best of Louisville issue of Louisville Magazine. Read more [4].
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Photos by Mickie Winters, mickiewinters.com [7]