A ‘Temporary’ Job That Paid the Bills : Ventura: Gene R. Howard started out as letter carrier 34 years ago to help pay for college. Now he has top spot in huge Pacific region.

When Gene R. Howard got a job delivering mail for the post office more than three decades ago, it was supposed to be a temporary position to help pay college bills.

But today--34 years later--the Ventura man is still an employee of the vast network that delivers the nation’s mail. And he was recently named area vice president for the U.S. Postal Service’s Pacific area, a gigantic postal region that includes all of California and Hawaii.

There are only nine other people in the country with a similar position, said Postal Service spokesman David Mazer. And with his promotion, Howard is just two steps away from the nation’s top postal job--postmaster general, Mazer said.

“He’s thought of as a doer,” Mazer said. “He’s not a yes-man kind of guy.”

Alfred Iniguez, who worked with Howard in his prior job as manager of the post office’s giant Van Nuys processing plant, agreed.

“He’s an outspoken individual,” Iniguez said. “If he thinks there is something wrong in the corporation, he speaks up.”

Howard, 52, never intended to become a postal employee.

But while studying industrial engineering at Cal State San Jose, he began working part-time as a letter carrier. Upon graduation in 1964, Howard briefly left the postal service to work in aerospace.

He returned to the postal service as an engineer in the early 1970s, when work in aerospace engineering began to decline. He then began a quick climb up the management ranks. Howard modestly says he’s still not sure how he got to the top in the postal service. His first job as a letter carrier paid $1.80 an hour; with his new title, he earns an annual salary of $135,000.

“I’m still pinching myself,” Howard said. “I never expected to have this job.”

On Thursday, he was in Washington, D.C., meeting with Postmaster General Marvin T. Runyon Jr. and chief operating officer William Henderson to discuss what his new job will entail.

He was selected for the post by Runyon and Henderson--his only superiors in the service--as part of an overall plan to improve efficiency in the agency, Howard said.

As vice president of the Pacific area, he is in charge of customer relations, mail delivery and administration at 39 major postal centers and 1,154 post offices.

About 103,000 employees are under his supervision, and he must make sure that 60 million pieces of mail reach their proper destination each day.

Howard allows that his new job is a “major challenge.” Beside dealing with employees in high-stress jobs, he also must help position the postal service to compete with a plethora of new services and technologies that threaten to cut into the service’s revenue.

Howard will be a key figure in how the postal service responds to the changing marketplace, where increasingly competitive offerings range from private express-mail companies to information accessed via computer.

To relieve his own stress, Howard turns to the sea. He and his wife, Judy, have lived near the ocean for the past 17 years, first in Santa Barbara and since last year, in Ventura, Howard said.

He has a 32-foot cutter, the Sunseeker, that he takes out to the Channel Islands whenever he gets the chance, Howard said.

He estimates he has made about 400 trips to the islands just off Ventura County’s coast in the past 20 years. His new job will require him to move to a suburb of San Francisco, Howard said.

“That’s going to be the toughest part of taking this job,” he said. “I love the tri-county area. This is probably where we will settle down when I retire.”