(A Vintage Vignette by John P. Rankin, January 5,
2010)
The 1969 Madison telephone
directory had four pages of subscriber listings, about ten in the 741
exchange. The rest were still in the 772
exchange created for the town in 1960 when Southern Bell bought the company and
set up automatic dialing. This allowed
toll-free calls from Madison to Huntsville for the 353 telephones that were in
service at the time of Southern Bell's purchase on July 10. By the end of 1960 the number of phones in
Madison had increased to 429. It reached
over 1500 by 1970. However, party lines
were still in use until the 1980s in some areas.
The 1960 system spelled the
end of the need for switchboard operators in Madison. Pud True sold the Madison Telephone Company
(with 79 customers) to J. P. Martin in 1950.
It was too dangerous for Pud to keep climbing the poles for company
operations and repairs. His aunt, Viola
(“Vidy”) Keel, had been switchboard operator from 1938 on the second floor of
the Humphrey-Hughes Drugstore at 200 Main Street. Martin moved the switchboard to the old post
office building on Garner Street. He was
one of only two people in Alabama who owned a telephone company while working
as an employee of Southern Bell. He employed
Carl James as an installer and repairman.
Carl sometimes was also nightime operator, while his wife was the day
operator for the system in the 1950s.
As another mark of the end of
the operator era, Vidy Keel passed away in 1968 and is buried in the Gurley
Cemetery. She was born in 1892 in
Gurley. In 1912 she was married to Percy
Brooks Keel, Sr. According to
Ancestry.com postings, she gave birth to Leo Louis Keel, Cecil Glen Keel, Ralph
Hardy (“Buddy”) Keel, and Percy Brooks (“Tootsie” or “Toots”) Keel Jr. Vidy's famous relatives per Ancestry.com
include an impressive array of U. S. Presidents plus Elvis Presley and many
well-known authors and actors.
When Vidy moved to Madison in
1938 as Madison's switchboard operator, she was divorced and brought with her
only Buddy and Toots. Louis had passed
away in his fourth year of life. Cecil
got married in 1937 in Louisiana,
leaving Vidy with two sons still at home.
Buddy played on Madison's first football team in 1938. They had four games and scored a total of 50
points versus their opponents' total of 44 points. The games were against Hazel Green (twice),
Tanner, and Riverton.
Toots had a leading role in
the 1941 eleventh grade class play, “Always in Trouble”. Other characters in the play were portrayed
by such Madison notables as Harvey Hardiman, Milton Carter, Edward Cobb,
Tillman Williams Jr., Lorinda Thornton, Dora Cain Apperson, Katie Mae Stewart,
Lillian Yarborough, and Gertrude Hovis.
Gertrude married John Calvin Smith in 1942, and Dora married Marcus Tuck
(a classmate) in that same year. Toots
married Helen Frances Finley in 1947.
They had two sons and a daughter, but one son was born and died on July
13, 1957. Kathy and John still live and
have their own families. Toots and Helen
lived at 209 Mill Road, in the house immediately west of the Madison City
Cemetery, where Toots resided until his passing on January 2 of this year(2010). Helen passed away in 1997 and they are buried
in Maple Hill Cemetery, even though Toots spent many years watching over
Madison-area cemeteries.
Toots graduated from Madison
High School in May of 1942 and enlisted in the Navy in July of that year. He was stationed at San Diego, Seattle,
Astoria, Pearl Harbor, and the Marshall Islands. His duty involved scouting for enemy
submarines until his discharge in 1945 at the Memphis Naval Air Station. He worked a variety of jobs after discharge
until he became an employee of the Madison Post Office in 1948. He served there until 1982 when he
retired. His routes as a mail carrier
included Triana and points south of Madison along the river. Helen had jobs with the telephone company in
Huntsville (they “met” over the switchboard) and later with Thiokol,
McDonnell-Douglas, and others. She
retired in 1983. They are missed in
Madison today.
