I
was a senior in St Mary's High School here in Iowa City, and heard that
the telephone company was hiring. I'd been thinking about looking for
work and that decided me on where to apply.
Hattie Goody was the
chief operator. She interviewed and hired me and I began on
February 14, 1944, as a part-time operator. Viola Fuhrmeister Stagg was
my instructor. The job seemed a bit overwhelming at first, but I
liked it. I continue to like the work for the rest of my telephone
career. At times one would get annoyed or irritated, but being an
operator was usually enjoyable.
I was even a bit frightened to
begin with, but that soon passed, as I gained experience at the board.
Catherine Hogan Reddick was one of my first supervisors and it
seems to me that Shirley Wharton was my supervisor for much of the time
I was an operator.
My first summer at the company I went on
full-time and ended up with hours like one to ten p.m. It took
quite a while to work my way up to day hours. Then an opening
came in the ranks of the toll instructors and so I became an
instructor. At the time Iowa City was training operators for
other towns who didn't have the personnel to do their own training.
When I wasn't needed to instruct, I would fill in on the floor
for any supervisor who might be gone for one reason or another.
In
about 1946 or 1947, I think, Anne Hughes and I went together on
temporary transfers to Burlington. The Iowa Ordinance Plant was
in the Burlington area hand seemed to hired all the available women,
leaving none for the telephone company. Burling was very short on
operators and just could not seem to recruit anyone. Anne & I
enjoyed our six months there but were glad to get back to Iowa City.
After
our return from Burlington, Anne and I trained together for central
office clerks. Alice Seitz from the district office in Davenport
came to Iowa City especially to train us. I believe the training
was just one week in which we learned the basics and then it was up to
La Vae Huffman Sueppel - the clerk at that time - to really shape us
up. Then we were able to alternate on filling in for LaVae
whenever she was on vacation or absent for any other reason.
Hattie
Goody was very strict, but fair and she certainly knew her way through
the mazes of the telephone company organization. She was a
stickler for correct procedures at work whether it was filling out
forms or handling equipment. I can remember Hattie pacing up and
down in the operating room, keeping an eye on how things were going.
Sometimes she would seem to be right behind your chair. She
was almost a perfectionist. She did expect a day's work for a
day's pay. At the office she was all business, but outside the
office, for example, at a party, she was lots of fun.
Among
those with who I worked at the company - other than those I've already
mentioned - were Esther Bouquot, Esther Franklin, Nelle Hartstock,
Eleanor Strasser Hughes, Marilyn Warren Pechous, and Ferndell Sims and
of course, many more - far too many to list here. Scores of
operators passed through the office while I worked there. It
would be impossible to remember all their names.
The strike in
1947 lasted a long time - six weeks altogether. I was young and
single and I enjoyed picketing along with the Western Electric fellows.
Since I was living at home I had no money problems. In fact
I was having a good time. Of course those people who were
supporting themselves and/or families were not enjoying the strike at
all. I really did not give a lot of thought to the reasons for the
strike, although I remember attending some meetings at the community
building before the strike started.
By the time I married in
1948, I was dial assignment clerk. However, when I went on my first
maternity leave, I left that position. Betty Stephens had been
the dial assignment clerk and I had become her back up. She had
married a Western Electric man and transferred to Omaha which left the
job open for me. I was dial assignment clerk for almost three
years before I went on maternity leave in 1951. When I came back
to work, I returned to the board as an operator and was fortunate
enough to be able to the the "new" short hours of five to eleven-thirty
p.m. and six p.m. to midnight.
There were six DSA - dial service
assistance positions at one end of the toll board when I first started
work. Local calls to numbers which could not be dialed, for
example, university and rural numbers, would come in on signals for
operators to manually complete the calls. Information,intercept,
and rate and route also appeared at these DSA positions; it seems to me
that the necessary record books were kept in bins on those positions.
Eventually
the university multiple was moved across the room, to the north side,
where the university board was set up as a separate division.
Also, information, intercept and rate and route were
eventually sorted out and put into their own location. When
I first came to work for the company, the toll board stretched down
only one side of the room. But when a second length of toll board
was installed on the other side of the room - the north side - the
university board was moved again, this time to the east end of the
original operating room area. When the university cut to centrex
a few years later and got their own operator consoles, the university
board was finally removed. A new addition was built on the end of
the operating room and all management and clerical desks were moved to
the new area. About a year before the office closed, we clerks
were moved into our own little office space. At this time there
were only two clerks on the force, Janet Forbes and I. We had
lost the directory clerk when information had been centralized to Des
Moines. And we had lost the dial assignment clerk even before
that. I believe thee were the last major changes before the
exchange closed.
I had a second maternity leave in 1953, and I
think it was after this leave that I worked only part-time for a while,
again back at the board. But after my third maternity leave - in
1958 - ended, I decided not to return to work. So I enjoyed about
a year's "vacation" and then decided I really should be working!
I returned to work, again as an operator, in 1959, and worked
late hours for quite a while. I may even have worked some
part-time. Evening suited me well because with three children I
needed to be home for as many of the day hours as I could.
After
the children were all in school, and I had worked my way up through the
schedule, I did go on day hours and worked something like six a.m. to
two-thirty p.m. until about 1975. Then Barb Dorsam, who had
followed LaVae Huffman Sueppel as a central office clerk, went on
maternity leave and I was offered the position on a temporary basis.
But Barb decided not to come back after her maternity lee was
over so I remained in the clerk's job until the exchange closed.
I think that my title changed several times in those last years
and I ended up being a force adjustment clerk.
Originally the
central office clerk had kept the directory and intercept records up to
date, however when dial assignment was split off, that clerk got the
directory and intercept records. Finally, the dial assignment
clerk had far too much work and the position of directory clerk was
established. I think that Joyce Adams was the first directory
clerk and I was her back-up.
Hattie Goody had retired in 1962.
That was the end of an era. I will say that she left at about the
right time. She was always dressed very neatly herself. You
never saw her downtown without hat and gloves. She always
expected her people to dress in good taste and I do not think she would
have been at all happy to see the pants, jeans, and even shorts which
appeared at the board a few years after her retirement when any sort of
dress code was a thing of the past.
We were told about three
years ahead of the time that the Iowa City exchange would close in
January of 9181. It was hard to believe that this would really
happen. The employment office began to hire "temporaries".
These people were hired for three years or less. No longer
would a new hired employee think she was coming to a permanent job.
I
must say that the exchange was not getting dedicated employees toward
the last. Being an operator became just a job which guaranteed a
paycheck every two weeks. There was no motivation to work hard.
Everyone knew the job would end in a relatively short time.
Advancement was out of the question. The tone of service
began to deteriorate and discipline began to go downhill. Of
course this became more evident as the time of closing drew near.
Even the regular employees who were looking forward to retirement
found it hard to maintain the accustomed standards of work. The
incentive was completely gone.
In the last three months of the
exchange I remember seeing operators reading at the board, working
crossword puzzles, doing needlework and visiting lots with adjacent
operators. Of course once the cuts had started, business had
decreased, and there was less work. First, the Iowa City subscribers
were cut away from their own exchange operators. This happened in
January of 1981. They would now be answered by operators in Des
Moines, Waterloo, or Davenport. Then, one by one the tribs -
tributary towns - were cut away, and finally only one or two were left.
All
this time the work force was dwindling. Every week when I did the
schedule, several more names would be dropped. After all,
scheduling was based on the number of calls expected. As the
number of calls expected fell off, so did the number of operators
needed. As the craft force shrank, so did the management force.
When
the last trib was cut away, the last operator - Jeris Boesel Kaalberg -
got up from the board and left. Patricia Olsen Miller - the last acting
chief operator, titled as acting manager in operator services and I had
been working for some time on clearing out the office equipment and
records in preparation for the closing. It was really sad when Pat came
to me that last day and told me the cut was all completed. She said
there was nothing else for me to do now and that I could go home.
I had only worked about half a day on this, may last day in the
operating room. It was hard to look at the switchboard and see it
without a single light on and know that your career with the telephone
company was over. It was even harder to walk out the employees door
that day.
Originally the exchange was to close in January, 1981
but the closing was delayed until March 31 of that year. On that
day the final cut was made and the exchange was officially closed. The
operators long tour of duty in Iowa City had at last come to an end.
Several
weeks later, while I was in the midst of using up my accumulated
vacation time, I was offered a temporary clerical job in the Iowa City
assignment and facilities department. They needed someone to help
out during the spring rush. I worked there for almost six months.
This enabled me to retire under the new contract, which made for
a somewhat higher pension than I would have received under the old
contract.
I retired in September of 1981, with almost
thirty-five years of service at Northwestern Bell. For about a
year, I stayed at home and then I went to work on the switchboard at
University Hospitals where I am currently employed. As I said, I
always enjoyed being an operator and I still do!