Early Days of the 217

Please enjoy tonight's encore Throwback Thursday post,
Early Days of the 217, originally published in January, 2015.   

 From The Litchfield News Herald in 1966...

TRY IT OUT: First direct distance dialing call from Raymond was placed by the village president, Ned Bockewitz, when the new system went into operation last week. At left is Gary Clifton, manager of Litchfield exchange, which handles Raymond and Harvel toll calls, and at right, Charles Bandy, Raymond businessman. 

(From the Raymond Centennial book published in 1971)

The telephone was introduced to Raymond in 1901, when a Mutual Telephone Company was formed with the office above Preston’s Drug Store. The first telephone operator was Mrs. Jett. In April of 1901, the town had 33 phones, most of them in the businesses. A little later, the Bell System installed a telephone exchange, with the office located near the old firehouse. Most business establishments had two telephones, one for each exchange, and people serviced by one exchange had to pay a toll to cover the other. About 1915, service was provided by the Montgomery County Telephone and Telegraph Company. The property was acquired by Illinois Consolidated Telephone Company in 1924. The People’s Mutual Company was sold to General Telephone Company and later acquired by Illinois Consolidated Telephone Company in 1930. Approximately 100 telephones were in service at that time.

In 1964, a new exchange building was constructed at 212 South O’Bannon Street for the installation of dial equipment. The exchange was converted to dial operation on August 31, 1964, and at that time,  Raymond became part of the Direct Distance Dialing (DDD) network, which enabled customers to dial and receive long distance calls to more than 80 million telephones in the United States. On the same date, the Raymond exchange boundary was expanded to include the Village of Harvel and surrounding rural area.

In 1971, Illinois Consolidated Telephone Company served nearly 1,000 telephones from the Raymond exchange. 

While we cannot deny the value of automation, the citizens of the Raymond area will long remember the local telephone operator. By merely lifting the receiver, the caller was in contact with a friendly voice who would call the doctor, the fire department, give you the correct time, or put your long distance call through for you. Miss Emma Younker gave more than fifty years of service in the Raymond office. Miss Anna Kelmel spent eleven years as the night operator, handling many emergency situations. Mr. Roy Huber was the local serviceman for over forty years.

Before the office was converted to the dial system, the following were employed as operators: Isabel Donini, Chief Operator; Beulah Miller, Mary Fern Halford, Hilda Cade, Bea Moore, Delores Lange, Dorothy Hough, and Helen Hartman.

Pete Henderson started working as the local serviceman in 1963. 

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

As the Centennial Book pointed out, the local telephone operators provided excellent service to the folks in the Raymond area back in the day. Dad always told a story about calling home when he was returning from the war. It was the middle of the night when his ship docked in New York and he placed the call to the Raymond Exchange. My Grandma, Anna Bandy, was living in the apartment above the Raymond Cafe, and the operator on duty that night ran from the telephone exchange to Grandma's apartment to wake her up and tell her the news. Grandma got so excited that she ran over to the telephone exchange wearing only her nightgown. She spoke to Dad and everything was fine until she hung up and realized that she was not wearing any shoes. Grandma had issues with her feet and could not walk without her orthopedic shoes. The problem was so severe that she could not even walk around inside barefoot. But that night in all the excitement, she had somehow managed to run almost two blocks without her shoes! The night operator was nice enough to go back over to the apartment and retrieve her shoes for her so she could walk back home. Talk about service!