A sample portrait

Ray Thompson

The mailman on one Georgia route for twenty-eight years, who knew every dog on it and knocked when the mail was still in the box.

Ray was an Air Force mechanic in West Germany, the first time he had left Georgia, then carried route nine in Newnan from 1979 until he retired. He coached Little League for thirty years. His children said he had spent his life listening to other people, and it was his turn.

Born 1950 · Newnan, Georgia · A 75th birthday gift from Angela and Marcus

Ray laughing on his front porch, a glass of iced tea on the rail

A chapter from his portrait

If the Mail's Still in the Box

From the third of four conversations, on the post office years.

There was maybe fifteen, twenty of them, older folks living by theirself. And if the mail was still in the box from yesterday, I knocked. That was all. If the mail's still in the box, you knock.

Miss Ida, she was ninety-some, she'd have a glass of tea for me on the porch rail, sweet tea, every day from May to September, with a saucer on top to keep the bugs out. And one day, it was August, the tea wasn't there. And the mail was still in the box. And I knocked and I knocked and I went round the back and she'd fell in the kitchen. And I called it in from her phone and I sat with her till they came. She broke her hip, but she was all right. She told everybody at First Baptist I saved her life. I didn't save her life. I just noticed the tea.

The torch. Ninety-six. It came right through Newnan, right round the courthouse square. And the whole town was out. And the young man carrying it, he'd been on my Little League team. Darnell Wiggins. He was my shortstop in eighty-eight. And he saw me standing there in my uniform with the satchel and he hollered, Coach! With the torch up in the air. In front of the whole town. I about fell over.

Miss Ida's granddaughter left me a glass of tea with a saucer on it. I carried mail for twenty-eight years, and on the last day they gave it back.

Sent in by the family

Their questions, answered

Marcus, his son, asked

Is the Duke story true?

There was a chow named Duke on Pecan Street that hated me for eleven years. And when Duke got old, the lady brought him out on the porch on a blanket so he could bark at me. And I gave him a Milk-Bone through the rail and he took it. First time in eleven years. You make me tell that one every Thanksgiving.

Simone, his granddaughter, 16, asked

Did you ever read people's postcards?

A postcard's an open book. I'm not saying I read them. I'm saying a postcard's an open book.

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Ray, his family and everyone on route nine are fictional. Newnan and the 1996 torch relay are real. Every portrait we make is private to the family.