HONOLULU — The U.S. Postal Service will dedicate the building housing its Waialae Kahala Station in honor of the late Cecil L. Heftel at 10:30 a.m. on Friday, Mar. 16.

The event will be hosted by USPS Acting District Manager Frank Santos and feature remarks by U.S. Congresswoman Colleen Hanabusa and Mr. Heftel’s widow, Rebecca Heftel. The dedication will culminate in the unveiling of a plaque that will designate the postal building at 4354 Pahoa Avenue as the “Cecil. L. Heftel Post Office Building.”

Hanabusa introduced legislation to dedicate the building in honor of Heftel in July 2011; it was signed into law (PL 112-50) by President Barack Obama on Nov. 7, 2011.

Cecil Landau Heftel was born in Chicago, Illinois, on September 30, 1924. He attended Chicago public schools and served in the United States Army from 1943 to 1946. Heftel received a B.S. degree in 1951 from Arizona State University, and did graduate work at the University of Utah and New York University.

He soon entered the broadcasting industry as the owner of several radio stations across the continental United States. As president of Heftel Broadcasting in Honolulu, Heftel developed and guided the KGMB radio and television stations to their years of market dominance under his ownership.

He ran unsuccessfully in 1970 to represent Hawaii in the United States Senate and was elected in 1976 as a Democrat to the Ninety-Fifth Congress and to the four succeeding Congresses, serving from January 3, 1977. He resigned on July 11, 1986, when he sought the Democratic gubernatorial nomination. At the age of 80, Heftel was elected to the Hawaii Board of Education and served a four-year term.

He died on February 4, 2010, in San Diego, California.

# # #

A list of processing facilities studied, FAQs, mail processing b-roll, and additional information can be found at usps.com/ourfuturenetwork.

A self-supporting government enterprise, the U.S. Postal Service is the only delivery service that reaches every address in the nation, 151 million residences, businesses and Post Office Boxes. The Postal Service receives no tax dollars for operating expenses, and relies on the sale of postage, products and services to fund its operations. With nearly 32,000 retail locations and the most frequently visited website in the federal government, usps.com, the Postal Service has annual revenue of more than $65 billion and delivers nearly 40 percent of the world’s mail. If it were a private sector company, the U.S. Postal Service would rank 35th in the 2011 Fortune 500. In 2011, the U.S. Postal Service was ranked number one in overall service performance, out of the top 20 wealthiest nations in the world, Oxford Strategic Consulting. Black Enterprise and Hispanic Business magazines ranked the Postal Service as a leader in workforce diversity. The Postal Service has been named the Most Trusted Government Agency for six years and the sixth Most Trusted Business in the nation by the Ponemon Institute.