Crowd fills Meadowbrook post office to dedicate facility to fallen Marine from Hoover

About 100 people showed up at the U.S. post office in Meadowbrook this afternoon to help dedicate the building in honor of a fallen Marine from Hoover.

The facility at 1900 Corporate Drive was designated as the Lance Corporal Thomas E. Rivers Post Office Building with a crowd packing the lobby.

Rivers, a 2007 graduate of Briarwood Christian School who followed his dream of becoming a U.S. Marine, was killed in Afghanistan on April 28, 2010, when an explosive device detonated while he was on patrol with the team he led.

Congressman Gary Palmer, a longtime friend of the Rivers family, came up with the idea to name the Meadowbrook post office after Rivers and sponsored the bill to make it happen. President Donald Trump signed the bill into law on July 24.

Today, Palmer said he’ll never forget the morning in 2010 he received the call about Rivers’ death. He was out of town and drove back home to Hoover to comfort the Rivers family. Once he became a Congressman, he wanted to do something to memorialize someone who paid the ultimate price for our country.

He hopes that other people, as they visit the Meadowbrook post office, will see his picture and the plaque dedicating the building in his honor and be reminded about the sacrifice that Rivers and so many others have made.

Susan Aronson, who oversees Postal Service operations in Alabama, said the men and women of the U.S. armed forces throughout history have protected and preserved the ideals of a great nation and the freedom we have.

“As with anything of value, it comes with a great cost and must continually be defended,” Aronson said.

Rivers, who had two grandfathers who were combat veterans, knew he wanted to be a Marine from the age of 9, and wrote an essay in his ninth-grade English class about why he wanted to be a Marine.

Such service requires courage, bravery and the knowledge that your life could be put in harm’s way, Aronson said. “Lance Corporal Rivers accepted his mission and proudly served his country,” she said.

This is only the second post office in Alabama that has been dedicated in honor of a person, said Michael Allison, the postmaster for the Birmingham post office.

The other is the Selma post office, which in 2016 was dedicated in honor of civil rights activist Amelia Boyton Robinson, who helped organize and lead the famous civil rights marches from Selma to Montgomery in 1965, said Lewis Kindle IV, the marketing manager for the Postal Service’s Alabama district.

Rivers’ mother, Charon Rivers, today said she was humbled and honored to have the Meadowbrook post office named after her son.

“When Thomas was first killed eight years ago, the one thing I wanted more than anything was for him to be remembered. So often, loved ones are forgotten after they have died,” she said.

She said she can’t think of a better way for him to be remembered than to have his picture and plaque in the post office just down the road from where he went to high school.

Tom Rivers, his father, said the outpouring of support for his son has been overwhelming. He has to smile, trying to imagine what his son thinks about the dedication, he said. “I just know that he’s smiling, too.”