90-year-old veteran delivers

  • Published
  • By 1st Lt. Brandon Lingle
  • Air Force Personnel Center Public Affairs
RANDOLPH AIR FORCE BASE, Texas (AFPN) --  A Depression-era work ethic, plus some faith and stubbornness, keeps fueling Martin "Mike" Mikulski who is in his 63rd year of service to his country.

Mikulski, 90, has spent most weekdays for the last 24 years volunteering his time.

"What the hell am I gonna do at home? Watch TV?" Mike says in a low and throaty voice. "I help out because I don't want to sit at home by myself -- that's boring."

The grandfatherly man starts his mornings by hand-sorting and delivering mail at the Air Force Personnel Center here. Many people filing through the plain beige halls stop and greet Mikulski when they see him maneuvering his pushcart of mail. He returns the courtesy as he navigates his route quicker than some people half his age who have not had hip replacement surgery.

After delivering the day's mail, Mikulski goes to the base chapel to help the chaplains prepare for daily Catholic Mass. He has been helping out at base chapels since the 1940s.

"He never slows down," said Gail Weber, a human relations officer who has kept a candy jar near her desk stocked for Mikulski for years. "He's always doing something."

"Mike has that brown-shoe military philosophy," said Pat Peek, chief of retiree services, the office where Mike's desk is located. "Plus he's the epitome of the old 'through rain, sleet, hail and snow' post-office work mentality."

This “do it right, do it now and move on” attitude could be a product of his journey through almost all of the 20th century.

Mikulski was born in 1913, when Woodrow Wilson was president, to Polish immigrants in Plymouth, Pa. The youngest of 10 children -- seven sisters and two brothers -- he learned English from his sisters.

After high school he went to the local coal mine looking for work.

"The foreman wouldn't hire me because I had a diploma," he said. "He told me I didn't belong down there, and I'm glad he did too; that's what killed my father -- 30 years in the mines -- black lung (disease)."

Instead, Mikulski stocked dry goods at a local department store until one day in 1940 when he passed a service-recruiting poster.

"I wasn't doing anything, so I joined," he said.

At 1 a.m. the next morning, the 27-year-old left his Susquehanna River valley home on a train bound for now-closed Chanute Air Force Base, Ill. In aircraft maintenance training, he earned the nickname "Mike" when an instructor could not pronounce his surname.

His unit got deployment orders when World War II erupted.

"I thought they were sending us over to the war," he said. "Instead they shipped us out to Albuquerque, (N.M.)"

Mikulski did not see combat during World War II, but he did work on classic aircraft like the T-6 Texan, B-24 Liberator, B-29 Superfortress and DC-3 Gooney Bird. While in New Mexico he met his wife, Mary, in 1943.

His first term here just before the Korean War was short lived.

"One of my men wanted a pass for the weekend to get married, but they wouldn't give him one," he said. "So I went to the command chief to argue for a pass, but I just made the chief mad and earned some orders to Okinawa, (Japan)."

After stints in the Pacific, he retired as a master sergeant in 1960. Mikulski returned to San Antonio and reunited with Mary who had stayed behind as a school supervisor.

He went to work for the U.S. Postal Service separating mail. He retired from there in 1979. When the AFPC sought mail delivery volunteers later that year, it was a natural fit.

When not on base, he is often at the local Knights of Columbus hall. Mike was not only one of the founding members of the Schertz, Texas, chapter, he donated the money to construct the building that now bears his name. He tends bar there at Mikulski Hall several nights a week but he does not drink.

Although Mikulski donates many hours, he said he enjoys chatting about the New York Yankees or playing a good game of pinochle in his free time.

He said he plans to volunteer as long as he can.

His advice to younger generations: "Be honest and be fair. People won't help you if you give 'em hell." (Courtesy of AFPC News Service)