DOSSIER:

Three things have taken Roger Conklin to 89 countries around the world: his 60-year career in telecom, the vacations it afforded him and the missionary work he's done since finding his wife of 51 years in Puerto Rico. She was a Methodist missionary, and he was in charge of outside plant sales for Northern Telecom.

There's lots of talk these days about network transformation. There was lots of talk of it back then. Conklin helped convert all of San Juan from manual to automatic operations and did the same in Brazil, Peru and all over Latin America. He finally retired last August as a consultant from Corning Cable Systems, more than 60 years after beginning his career as an 11-year-old switchboard operator for Kellogg Switchboard Company in Hickory Corners, Mich. In between, he took his engineering degree from the University of Michigan and went to work for Citizens Cable, Continental Telephone, Cook Electric Company, Corning Cable, ITT (Peru and Brazil), Kellogg and Northern Telecom.

Conklin has two more years as secretary of Telephone Collectors International, an organization of telephone collectors, hobbyists and historians helping to preserve the history of telecommunications. His friends say he'll be the next president. He says he thinks not.

What is the mission of Telephone Collectors International?

We are really a historical organization. We try to resurrect and maintain the history of telephony around the world — for posterity, that's all. Our monthly newsletter (Singing Wires) is not only dedicated to old telephones but to lots of bits and pieces of history, which is pretty hard to piece together. There are a couple of good books put out over the years. One was by Harry McMeal in 1934 called “The Story of Independent Telephony.” It's very good, but fairly disorganized — doesn't even have an index. Another was in 1989 by Charles Pleasance, “The Spirit of Independent Telephony.” I think he even worked at Telephony at one time.

You have an event later this week and again Labor Day weekend (see page 7). What goes on there?

About 50 to 100 people bring their collections. Some come to buy, some to sell, some just to display. We often have people from the community come in because they're curious or they want to bring in some old phone from their Uncle Henry. There's always someone there willing to buy it. People collect wooden wall phones, candlestick phones, crank phones, you name it. Occasionally, we have speakers come like Alexander Graham Bell's grandson.

How did you get involved with TCI, and what do you collect?

I stumbled onto them on the Web about 10 years ago when I was trying to become computer literate. The first phone in my collection is an old Western Electric magneto set I took off a farmer's wall in 1950 while I was in college. The farmer wanted to get rid of that old piece of junk. I bought it for $1.50. Still works. That was the only one I had for years. I dragged it around South America and picked up a few more while I was there. Now I have a lot of foreign phones: one from Russian with Cyrillic numbers, an Egyptian phone with Arabic numbers on the dial and phones from Hungary, Poland, Estonia, Brazil, Argentina, Belgium, Mexico, France. My favorite is a 1910 automatic electric wall phone. When the telephone men come to fix a problem in my yard, I generally bring them in to see. Some are overwhelmed. Some are just bored.

Where Does TCI get its financing?

Dues. In the early days, phone companies would sometimes make a donation, but that's pretty well gone by the board now. They've lost their interest in history. Their focus is on the bottom line. And membership has its ups and downs. But people do get fascinated with these things. Some people collect old cars, some people old tractors and some of us collect old telephones.