My Mother spent time as a “Number Please” person.  Sometime after 1940, my grandparents, Clifford and Lula Long moved from Estill, South Carolina to Jacksonville, Florida.  My grandfather’s family had lost the family farm and he needed work. They moved to Jacksonville where he would work on Liberty ships on the St. Johns River in the Duval County area.  My grandmother, Lula was a stay-at-home-mom.

Switchboard. 1940’s (Beaches Museum. Photo-Ramey).

At that time, my Mother was engaged to my Dad who was overseas serving in the Army, 7th Armoured  Division.  My Mom, Geneva took a job with Southern Bell and worked at a switchboard fielding phone numbers all day long.  When a light would appear on the switchboard, my Mother explained, she would take a plug from the bottom of the switchboard and insert it in the hole representing the phone number and say “Number please”.  With that, someone would give her a phone number to call and she would connect the caller to the number where it would ring.   During that time she used her own connections to make calls by sometimes calling other towns and sometimes even dialing the phone call herself.  In the photo, you can see a phone with a dial on the side of the switchboard.

Geneva Long Vaughan (Riverside area- 1940’s)

Switchboard operators had an alphabetical listing of names from which to look for numbers if a caller did not know the number.  Those listings with a red dot by their names were unlisted numbers and not allowed to be given out.

Switchboard 1940’s (Beaches Museum- Photo- Ramey).

My Mom was employed with Southern Bell in Jacksonville, Florida for several years. 

Interesting too is that my Dad was the administrator in charge of the telephone switchboard operators at Cecil Field Naval Air station during his some 35 years employed there.

See you tomorrow ,

Nan