He was Dover's mailman for 23 years. He recently said goodbye.

Greg Kocher sorted through the bins of mail in the back of his Gruman LLV postal truck and said, "It's gonna be a tough day."

It didn't seem like it. The sun was out. It was about 70 degrees and dry. It wasn't raining, or snowing, or toe-numbing cold, or Death-Valley hot. It was, weatherwise, and postal worker-wise, a perfect day.

Yet, it was going to be a tough day.

It was Kocher's last day on his route in Dover, trading the small-town route for a more suburban one that doesn't require walking.

He's been the letter carrier in Dover for 23 years, since '94; at 54, he's been with the Postal Service for 31.

So it was going to be tough. "Lots of goodbyes," Kocher said.

He figures he has covered the route about 5,000 times, 200-some times a year for more than two decades. In that time, he has come to know the town and its people. He is part of the community, the mailman. Everybody knows him.

And after last Thursday, he'll be gone, moving to another route, trading the Dover route for one in the suburbs. He figured it was time for a change.

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He walked down Mayfield Street, stopping to deliver mail and greet some of the people along the way. Pat McEvoy, who's lived in the same house since '64, came to the door, and when Kocher told her it was his last day on the route, McEvoy said, "Oh, no."

She stepped from the doorway and gave him a hug, one of many he collected on his last day in Dover. "I'm going to miss you," McEvoy said.

She mentioned that her late husband, Bill, gone 14 years now, loved Kocher. This day would have made him sad. "Greg's a great guy," she said as he walked away to continue delivering the mail.

Kocher spent about two hours or so a day walking the route. The rest was delivered from the seat of his LLV. It keeps him in shape, he said. "I don't have to join a gym," he said. "Going to an all riding route now, I may have to go to the gym."

The town has changed since he started there – the older people moving out to assisted living or the cemetery and younger people moving in. He has seen kids born while working the route graduate from college.

"You kind of get too know people," he said.

Through their mail. He can tell when someone's birthday is approaching, or when a baby has been born, or when there's been a death in the family. "You can usually tell by the color of the cards what the event is," he said.

And, he said, you get to know the dogs along the route as well as the people. He's never been bitten. He's been chased a few times, but he's only had to use his dog spray twice in 31 years on the job. The dogs you have to watch out for are the ones whose owners promise they won't bite. "People say, 'My dog won't bite,' but you never know," he said.

The dogs at one house slam into the picture window in the front of the house as Kocher crosses the porch to get to the mailbox. "They're just saying, 'Who the heck is that on my porch?'" Kocher said, even though he crossed that porch nearly every day for 23 years.

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He gets to see a lot of people, and they always stop to chat, or at least to say hello. At Christmas, he said, "I get more cookies than I can possibly eat. It's the thought. If I ate every cookie ... thank goodness Christmas is just once a year."

He looks out for people. If mail piles up, he checks on the person. Once, he said, the front door to one of the houses on his route was open. It struck him as odd; something seemed wrong. Something was wrong. The elderly woman who lived there had died overnight. Twice, at an apartment complex, he noticed mail piling up and notified the apartment manager. In both cases, the occupants of the apartments were found dead inside.

"We're here every day," he said. "Even something very slight, we pick up on it."

It's not all death and cookies. A woman on his route works at his dentist's office, and once while at the dentist, before she knew who he was, he said hello to her, calling her by name. She wanted to know how he knew her, and he told her, "I come to your house every day." She looked shocked, as if Kocher was some weirdo or stalker or God knows what. He said quickly, "I'm your letter carrier."

He had thought about telling the people on his route about the change sooner. But it was tough. He didn't know how to tell them. And when he did tell them, he said, "You could tell by the look on their faces. It's a shock. It's very emotional."

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On his last day on the route, a recent Thursday morning, he told the people he ran into along the way about the change. They appeared shocked, like they couldn't understand it. He was their mailman, has been since they could remember. "It's surreal," Kocher said. "It just doesn’t seem real."

As he walked along Canal Road, a motorcycle pulled up.

"Hey, Greg, it's Adam Cataldi," the biker, wearing his full-face helmet said.

Kocher had been Cataldi's mailman since he was a kid. He delivered mail to his parents' house, and now he delivers to Cataldi's house and is the only letter carrier his kids have known.

"Greg's a good guy," Cataldi said. "We need more guys like him in the community. We're gonna miss him."

Kocher said, "I'm gonna miss you guys, too."

Reach Mike Argento at 717-771-2046 or at mike@ydr.com.