Before emergency alerts, automated warnings, and instant messages, disaster news often passed through the hands of a telephone operator.
They were known as “hello girls,” and in moments of fire, flood, storm, epidemic, and panic, many of them stayed at their switchboards while danger closed in around them.
Again and again, these women proved their courage.
They warned families, summoned doctors, connected rescuers, and helped save lives, even when they had every chance to flee to safety themselves.
In 1920, one writer argued that the nation owed these telephone operators more than impatience and harsh words. It owed them gratitude.
“Hello” Girls Praised for Acts of Bravery
We are indebted to Sherman Rogers, a painstaking investigator, for an article in the current number of The Outlook dealing with the loyalty of the telephone girl to the public. Mr. Rogers searched the files of Associated Press dispatches showing the acts of heroism and fidelity to duty on the part of these girls all over the country and he has summed up his research in an article that bristles with common sense conclusions.
In fires in office buildings and munition plants, etc., in floods, in cyclones and in other calamitous events, the telephone girl has proven her courage and earned a niche in the hall of fame.
To recite the hundreds and hundreds of cases noted by Mr. Rogers would require too much space; but perhaps more impressive than the stories themselves, which could be elaborated from mere Associated Press dispatches into true tales of the movies or magazine stories of real life, is the outstanding fact that in every instance the telephone girl was actuated by her loyalty not necessarily to the company but to the public.
This has been indicated during great storms in cities, during disease epidemics, such as the flu, when the telephone girls braved the blizzards to reach their posts of duty because of the unusual calls for medical aid from the public, during fires and floods wherein thousands of lives were saved by the fidelity of the telephone operators who stuck to their posts until they collapsed or were carried away by force — or died at the switch board.
We have had our Joan of Arcs, our Molly Pitchers, and other heroines of history. To attempt to detract from their fame would be fatuous; but after all these heroic deeds were performed before the eyes of cheering thousands, while the telephone girl, alone, with no eyes or applause to bolster her courage, stuck to the switch board, notifying hundreds so they could escape fire, flood and cyclone, knowing full well she might pay with her life for so doing, although having ample time to make her way to safety.
Some are disposed to be cross to the telephone girl because we cannot get a connection as quickly as we should, and some have been ungentlemanly enough to use abusive language to the “hello girl,” but after having read the facts chronicled by Mr. Rogers, none would repeat the offense or indulge in harsh criticism. His hat would be off to the patients, untiring loyal worker who has shown the rest of us what real service is.
Source: American Falls Press. American Falls, Idaho. June 4, 1920.
