08/21/2026
Story from Edmond Life & Leisure
Fourteen postal workers were killed and six wounded in a workplace attack whose effects reached far beyond Oklahoma.
On the morning of Aug. 20, 1986, a routine shift at the United States Post Office in downtown Edmond became one of the darkest events in Oklahoma history. Postal employee Patrick H. Sherrill entered the facility armed with three semiautomatic pistols and ammunition, killed fourteen co-workers and wounded six others before taking his own life.
The attack followed a workplace reprimand the previous day. Historical accounts say Sherrill, a relief letter carrier who had
been disciplined several times, had previously threatened revenge. Shortly after arriving for work, he killed a supervisor and moved through the building firing at employees. The violence ended within minutes.
We recognize this tragic event today, August 20, 40 years ago. It was one of those times you remember exactly what you were doing and where you were. I was working for our sister newspaper, OKC FRIDAY, as a young advertising manager. That morning, I called my counterpart at the Edmond Sun, Cliff Condy. In the middle of our conversation, he broke in and said, “I need to go. Only later did I find out what tragedy occurred that he had to leave the conversation for that day.
A National Turning Point
At the time, the Edmond shooting was Oklahoma’s largest mass killing and the nation’s third-largest mass murder committed by one person in a single incident. It also became a defining case in the history of workplace violence. Along with later attacks involving postal employees, the tragedy contributed to the spread of the phrase “going postal,” an expression now widely criticized for reducing human loss and workplace trauma to a casual stereotype.
Federal scrutiny followed. A lengthy U.S. Postal Inspection Service report examined the shooting, and a congressional hearing on March 18, 1987, gave survivors and victims’ families a forum to question hiring, workplace safeguards and the Postal Service’s response. A 1988 federal review also evaluated how the agency managed the after-math and urged stronger crisis-management planning for future traumatic events.
The Fourteen Lives Lost
The dead ranged in age from 27 to 51 and represented many parts of the postal operation. They were Patricia Ann Chambers, 41, a part-time clerk; Judy Stephens Denney, 41, a part-time clerk; Richard C. Esser Jr., 38, a supervisor; Patricia A. Gabbard, 47, a clerk; Jonna Ruth Gragert, 30, a clerk; Patty Jean Husband, 48, a supervisor; and Betty Ann Jared, 34, a clerk.
Also killed were William F. Miller, 30, a rural carrier; Kenneth W. Morey, 49, a rural carrier; Leroy Orrin Phillips, 42, a rural carrier; Jerry Ralph Pyle, 51, a rural carrier; Paul Michael Rockne, 33, a letter carrier; Thomas Wade Shader Jr., 31, a part-time clerk; and Patti Lou Welch, 27, a clerk.
Their work titles show a crosssection of the Edmond post office—clerks who managed mail inside the facility, carriers who served neighborhoods and rural routes, and supervisors responsible for daily operations. Welch had worked for the Postal Service for five years and had been married only four and a half months. Rockne was a grandson of celebrated football coach Knute Rockne, while Phillips was a retired member of the U.S. Air Force. Such details underscore that the death toll was not an abstraction: each name belonged to a co-worker, relative, friend and member of a wider community.
A Memorial and an Enduring Legacy
In 1989, the Edmond community and the U.S. Postal Service dedicated a memorial on the post office grounds. Created by sculptor Richard Muno, it depicts a standing man and woman holding a yellow ribbon, surrounded by fourteen fountains—one for each person killed. The inscription preserves the victims’ names together, turning the memorial into both a public record and a continuing tribute to the individuals behind the number 14.
Four decades later, the shooting remains central to Edmond’s civic memory and to the national history of workplace violence. Its lasting story is not only the horror of a few minutes in 1986, but also the lives lost, the survivors’ long recovery and a community’s effort to remember with dignity.
