Whoever sent Carol Kimborough the letter forgot one small thing: the address on the envelope. No, not the return address; that was there. The sender failed to put an address on the envelope.
Kimborough received the letter anyway. On the envelope was a handwritten message, "Am I good or what?"
Clownie Wallace was the mailman who delivered the unaddressed letter to Kimborough. Last Saturday, more than 100 residents of Potomac’s East Gate and Potomac Preserve neighborhoods went to the Potomac Community Center for an award ceremony for Wallace, who is retiring after 20 years as their mailman.
"It wasn’t just a job for him. He loved his work, and consequently he was loved back," said Bob Blumberg, who attended the party. "He was always a person you could count on. … In a sense, like a member of everyone’s family."
"YOU KNEW HE WAS coming when you heard the classical music coming from his truck," said Taylor Moon, a Churchill junior who attended last Saturday with her mother, Bonnie Jones-Moon. During graduation season in May and June, Clownie played "Pomp and Circumstance" as he drove through the streets.
Dozens of people recounted similar stories about how Wallace was in tune with the lives of those in the neighborhood. When high school seniors were applying to college, one recounted, Clownie would come to the door with the thick envelopes from the admissions offices, pump his fist and yell, "Yes!"
"He knew so much of what was going on, and he could relate to it," Blumberg said.
When Milt Minneman’s family filled out the yellow hold-service card before a family vacation, he’d get a handwritten note from Wallace that said, "Have a good time, be safe, come back." Minneman also said that upon the family’s return, they’d receive a handwritten welcome back from Clownie.
Nancy Steinberg recounted the time one neighbor was unaware that her daughter had a half-day of school. Wallace saw the girl on the stoop crying. He found a house where somebody was home and saw to it the girl’s parents were notified, Steinberg said. "That was the kind of thing he’d do."
When people moved into the neighborhood, Wallace made it a point to greet them in person. "My name is Clownie — spelled with an I-E — and I’m your mailman," he would tell them.
Clownie isn’t a nickname. It’s Scottish in origin, he said, and it was passed through the family every other generation. He added that it skipped generations because "Everybody that had it wouldn’t pass it to anybody else."
WALLACE SAID just a few words after he was introduced during Saturday’s party. "I loved my work," Wallace told the crowd that attended Saturday’s event. "I enjoyed it more than I ever would have thought. … You treated me wonderfully."
Bob Honig, a resident attending the party, marveled at how the farewell to Clownie lent a sense of community to the neighborhood.
"The thing that stands out for me is that this is the first time the community has come together for any one issue," he said.