Post-modern: a female mail carrier

Nov. 13, 1966: Gloria Parker, an employee in the Van Nuys post office, decided she wanted a more active career and applied to transfer to the post office near her Burbank home as the city’s first female mail carrier.

She was hired as a substitute, filling in for other carriers on their days off, The Times reported.

Although the “attractive blond” liked her job handling “five different routes a week” and delivering mail to 450 homes, she “has run into difficulties no man has encountered,” she told The Times.

“Some people just don’t believe that a woman can be a letter carrier,” Parker said. Once, she said, “I started to push my mail cart which I use on the rounds when a woman at a house yelled to me to ‘leave that cart alone, it belongs to the post office.’ ”

But Parker said her major trouble did not stem from postal patrons, but her own two feet. “I get tired of walking so much,” she said.