Postal Service Puts Stamp of Approval on Own Artist

Harry D. Keltner’s regular job is sorting mail in the U.S. Postal Service station in Orange, but he is also the resident artist.

Before his mail job, Keltner tried to make a living in free-lance graphics and as an artist, “but I nearly starved,” he said, which is the reason he opted for a stable and steady job offered by the Postal Service.

“I started painting when I was 5 years old, so I’ve been an artist all my life,” he said, “and since I started working at the post office, I’ve been bringing prints to sell to other employees who wanted them. Then I thought it would be nice to paint something in the station.”

His mural in the lunchroom of the station in Orange caught the eye of postal executives, who asked if he would do more of them at other stations on company time.

“Actually, I consider it a privilege to paint my murals in the post offices,” said Keltner, 38, of Orange, who studied art at Fullerton College and once worked as a needlepoint designer. “A lot of people enjoy the murals, and they’ll be there for posterity.”

He said art in the work areas of post offices isn’t exactly new. “During the Depression in the 1930s, when everyone was out of work,” Keltner said, “artists would be hired to paint murals in post offices to give them work.”

He is now painting a series of pictorial post card-like murals, each three feet high, in the Santa Ana Post Office. “There will be 22 murals when I’m finished, and I’m only on No. 11,” said Keltner, who first photographs many of the scenes he wants to paint on the walls.

Controller Robert C. Gillis of the Santa Ana facility said, “The murals . . . done for us illustrate what the (Postal Service) division is all about.” And he pointed out that Keltner’s works are “art in the truest sense.”

In other post offices, Keltner’s mural scenes fit the local environment. For instance, in the Riverside and Orange facilities, he researched and reproduced orange-crate labels, and also created murals of trees and winding roads.

While his early efforts were done piecemeal, “now my schedule is fixed so I can paint for a month or two at a time,” he said. “If I paint, I paint. If I sort mail, I sort mail.”

At first, Laguna Beach resident Susie Carter, 43, was apprehensive about going to Alaska to explore a new life style with husband David, 47. “It was kind of a scary place to me, and I thought all they had up there were igloos, snowshoes and sled dogs,” she said, “but I was surprised.” She said Anchorage, where they live, has 250,000 people, and the winters are milder than in some states on the East Coast.

With that thought and a lack of women, especially in the backcountry, the Carters have started a 5,000-run quarterly pictorial magazine called Alaska Men to show the state’s male as “a breed apart” to attract females to Alaska.

“Our first magazine had 30 men in it, and the response was so great we put 60 men in the second printing,” she said, noting that older women are also on the lookout for companions. “We’re planning an ‘Oldies but Goodies’ section in our next magazine.”

And despite her new business, and her affection for Alaska, she said, “We still come down to visit in Orange County. I love it down there.”

After a distinguished 30-year career in education, the last five as principal of Edison High School in Huntington Beach, Jack Kennedy, 55, said he’ll retire in January to “cool it,” so to speak.

He and his wife, Barbara, plan to build a home in Northern California within easy reach of their favorite downhill and cross-country skiing haunts.

The town they’re moving to is named Cool.

Robert Michael Conrad’s “Television Comedies” seminar at Saddleback College, designed to teach people how to break into television, will draw a big turnout if past experience means anything. It will be held July 11.

“It’s amazing how many people want to be actors in television sitcoms and come out for this,” said Conrad, a professional actor and director of the soap opera “Balboa,” which is shown on cable television. “I think most people want to get into acting.”

Conrad gets a lot out of it, too. “I make some money, and, in all honesty, I use a lot of the people who show up for the class.” But he notes that his soap opera is made with non-union help and that actors on the show are not eligible to pick up their Screen Actors Guild card.

However, he said, he tells his students how they can enter the acting profession on the lower level by learning how to interview and read scripts.

“Once you get the card, there’s bigger and better things ahead,” said Conrad, 32, of Newport Beach.

The one-day seminar costs $35.

Acknowledgments--Relatives of Jenny Magler of La Habra are known for their terrific family parties--and they just threw another one. The Swedish-born Magler was honored on her 100th birthday.