Anthony ‘Tony’ Parent
April 14, 1961 to August 11, 2015
Family, friends, fellow workers — as well patrons of the U.S. Post Office in Montpelier — are remembering longtime postal clerk Tony Parent who died on August 11 from complications resulting from colon cancer. He was 54.
Before he came to Montpelier, Tony started out with the U.S. Postal Service at a mail processing plant in Pennsylvania. He began in Montpelier as a postal clerk in July 2002 and worked there until his recent death.
Tony was born to George W. Parent and the late Rita (Rainville) Parent on April 14, 1961 in St. Albans. His family ran a dairy farm in Enosburg Falls and he was one of the older boys in a family that included 14 children.
He graduated from Bellows Free Academy in St. Albans in 1978 and served in the United States Army for 20 years rising to the rank of master sergeant.
Randy Boucher, a fellow postal clerk at the Montpelier Post Office talked with The Bridge by phone about Tony Parent. “I started here in 2006,” said Boucher. “We knew each other for about 10 years.”
According to Boucher, Tony lived in Hyde Park (Vermont) but went to Catholic Church in Stowe. About 10 to 12 postal employees attended his funeral service there.
According to Boucher, the priest said that on Sundays Tony would sit in the back row and greet people and do the collections.
Boucher said that after church on Sundays, Tony would go up to the family farm in West Enosburg and bring bags of candy and mow his parents’ lawn.
“He loved gardening,” Boucher said. “He really enjoyed gardening. That’s what he liked to do, to relax. He really enjoyed watching ice hockey and was a fan of the Boston Bruins.”
Commenting on Tony Parent’s work at the post office, Boucher described Tony’s all-around work as a postal clerk, “You’re on the counter or you’re out back.” Often there was detail work such as forwarding mail and not everyone liked this detail work. “He would step up and do it,” Boucher said.
With postal customers, said Boucher, “He would go out of his way.”
“We had one older customer who lived on Elm Street who got a heavy box in the mail and Tony brought it to him on his way home.”
Another customer who knew Tony from the post office described the quality of Tony’s service in a phone call to The Bridge.
She described herself as “a frequent flyer” — someone who likes sending out cards and packages.
“Tony always called me by name,” she said. “He remembered I often sent packages to friends in Maryland. When a poorly-addressed package was returned from Maryland as to Montpelier as undeliverable, Tony phoned her and asked if it might be a package that she sent out. But it wasn’t. That didn’t matter. What she appreciated was Tony’s attention to detail and his thoughtfulness in wanting to serve his postal customers.
