New postmaster happy to be in Comanche

by Todd Brooks

Kent Keehn nods at a couple of unopened boxes in his still mostly undecorated office.

“My wife hasn’t had a chance to come decorate my office for me,” he says with a chuckle. “I warned her that my office is about half the size of my old office, so I don’t know where she is going to put it all.”

The large boxes contain all sorts of SpongeBob SquarePants toys and memorabilia that will at some point in the future join the other SpongeBob stuffed toys and other items he has already set up on a small bookshelf.

“I have friends who will find SpongeBob stuff and get it for me,” Keehn says.

The cartoon character is just one aspect of Comanche’s new postmaster, though. While he has been at the Comanche post office for around three weeks so far, he brings a wealth of experience in the postal business.

He got his start fresh out of high school after graduating from Walters High School in 1984. His mother had been a longtime post office clerk, so going into the civil service was just a natural fit for him. He started out as a mail carrier, but just six years later he had his first postmaster job. He has been the postmaster at Cyril, Temple, Elgin and most recently in his hometown of Walters, where he was the postmaster for three years.

“It’s a lot easier here,” Keehn said. “I don’t have to carry mail here. Where I was before, we were always shorthanded and I would have to go do mail routes.”

He said he is enjoying getting to know the people of Comanche and that the best part of his job is getting to meet people, which is what has kept him going so long with the postal service.

“Everything has been going good and real smooth so far,” Keehn said.

Keehn has seen some changes over the years, the biggest of which is what is being mailed.

“One of the biggest changes is the increase in packages and that is mainly due to Amazon,” Keehn said. “Another is you used to have a lot of people that worked in mail because they had to manually work everything. Now that everything is processed on machines, you don’t need as many people.”

He and his wife Roxanna have three adult children and several grandchildren. They were therapeutic foster parents for six years and adopted their children through being foster parents.

“Therapeutic foster children are the ones that DHS gets them and then they deem that they need special treatment or help or whatever,” Keehn said.

“We bowled with a woman who did placements for therapeutic foster care and she got us involved,” Keehn said. “It’s pretty challenging. They need special help and counseling.”

As he stands behind the familiar counter of the Comanche post office to have his picture taken, a comment is made about being in the spot where most people will see him, it reminds him of his past experiences of standing behind post office counters.

“You see people who come in the post office every day that see you behind a counter, but when they see you somewhere else like Wal-Mart, they recognize you but they’re not sure from where,” he said with a laugh. “They’re like, ‘Where do I know you from?’”