Transcript of interview with Janet Savalli by Irene Rostine, September 21, 1996

An Interview with Janet Savalli An Oral History Conducted by Irene Rostine, M.A. ______________________________________________ Las Vegas Women Oral History Project University of Nevada, Las Vegas 1996 ii ? NSHE, Women’s Research Institute of Nevada, 1996 Produced by: Las Vegas Women Oral History Project Women’s Research Institute of Nevada, UNLV Dr. Joanne L. Goodwin, Director Irene Rostine, M.A., Interviewer Tamara Marino, Transcription iii iv This interview and transcript have been made possible through the generosity of donors to the Women’s Research Institute of Nevada. The College of Liberal Arts provides a home for the Women’s Research Institute of Nevada, as well as a wide variety of in-kind services. The History Department provided necessary reassignment for the director, as well as graduate assistants for the project. The department, as well as the college and university administration, enabled students and faculty to work together with community members to generate this selection of first-person narratives. The participants in this project thank the University for its support that gave an idea the chance to flourish. The text has received minimal editing. These measures include the elimination of fragments, false starts, and repetitions in order to enhance the reader’s understanding of the material. All measures have been taken to preserve the style and language of the narrator. In several cases, photographic sources (housed separately) accompany the collection as slides or black and white photographs. The following interview is part of a series of interviews conducted under the auspices of the Las Vegas Women Oral History Project. Additional transcripts may be found under that series title. Dr. Joanne Goodwin, Project Director Associate Professor, Department of History Women’s Research Institute of Nevada, Director University of Nevada Las Vegas v Preface While in elementary school in 1945, Janet Savalli’s family moved from Phoenix, Arizona, to Henderson, Nevada, so her father could work at the Basic Magnesium plant complex. A few years later, when Janet was a junior in high school, she would begin her 46-plus years career at the Southern Nevada Telephone Company which eventually became Sprint. During this period, she held several positions, including operator, supervisor, schedule clerk, trainer, investigator, and community relations coordinator. Not only does Janet’s oral history detail changes in the telecommunications industry, but also the dramatic growth in Las Vegas that has occurred in the post-World War II decades. During Janet’s employment with the telephone company, the population of the Las Vegas Valley grew from 20,000 to over a million-and-a-half people. With this growth, she witnessed the transition from PBX boards to direct dial service followed by the state-of-the-art technological advances that eventually led to Sprint Corporation. She experienced the arrival of the union, as well as changes in wages, benefits, diversity, and integration. Janet’s oral history provides a glimpse of what life was like for working women at the telephone company and touches on the need for many telephone operators to work part-time jobs as cocktail waitresses in order to get by. She recalls fondly the important community outreach work conducted by telephone company volunteers, including the Centel Singers. Telecommunications was intertwined with many industries associated with Las Vegas in the 1950s and 1960s, including the gaming industry. From the bookies back vi east to the rich and famous Howard Hughes, Janet interacted with all of them through her work at the Southern Nevada Telephone Company. Additionally, Janet shares her observations about the atomic bomb testing at Camp Mercury and Camp Desert Rock. These tests provided opportunities for families to gather together on their front porches and enjoy “the awesome sight of above ground testing” together. Janet also credits the atomic bomb testing with jump-starting the second wave of growth Las Vegas experienced following World War II. This growth had a particular influence on the telecommunications industry’s need to expand in Las Vegas. Over the course of her career with the telephone company, Janet made time to travel abroad which provided her with opportunities to compare telecommunications in America, and Las Vegas, with other parts of the world. From the “Operator, number please” days to bookies and bombs, Janet truly has seen it all. From these experiences, she has concluded, “You cannot take the telephone for granted any place, except in the United States.” vii Janet Savalli sits in the Southern Nevada Telephone Company’s exhibit booth during a Las Vegas Convention Center event in 1957. On display in the booth are the recently available color telephones, a state-of-the-art telephone booth with dial capability, demographic statistics, and the Southern Nevada Telephone Company’s financial overview. (Photo provided by Janet Savalli.)viii An Interview with Janet Savalli An Oral History Conducted by Irene Rostine, M.A. ix 1 This is an oral interview with Janet Savalli by Irene Rostine in Las Vegas, Nevada, on September 21, 1996, at 1:00 p.m. [Tape 1, Side A] Good afternoon, Janet. Before we begin our interview, I am going to read you the Deed of Gift Agreement. It states that [agreement read]. Do you understand and agree to these terms? That’s correct. I do. Thank you. Janet, tell me when did you first come to Las Vegas? My family came to Las Vegas in June of 1945. We came here from Phoenix, Arizona. My father was going to work at one of the plants. I think it was Basic Magnesium. There was my mother, myself, my brother, Pete, [who] was just born. He was six weeks old when we came here in 1945. I went to Basic Elementary School in Henderson [which is] where we moved. I went to school there until we moved to Las Vegas when I was a junior in high school. I went to work for the telephone company then known as Southern Nevada Telephone Company. I worked during high school. I worked about 30 to 35 hours a week. When I worked, I was hired as a long distance operator. They had very few positions – about 16 total positions. They had four more, but they were used primarily for training. I was hired as an operator I think because the chief operator liked the fact that I had two years of Latin and excellent handwriting. I worked there all through high school and I am still working there. As a matter of fact, this is my 46th year. I am the most senior employee. Not the oldest, mind you, but the most senior employee in the telephone company. Nobody’s worked there longer than I have at this date. Wonderful. When you moved to Las Vegas from Henderson, you attended Las Vegas High School? 2 Yes. The only high school there was in Las Vegas was the Las Vegas High School. You went there all four years? Just from my junior and senior year. I went to Basic High in Henderson my freshmen and sophomore year. There has been some discussion about Las Vegas High School as to whether or not they had a swimming pool. Do you remember anything about a swimming pool there? I don’t remember anything about a swimming pool. If they had one, it must have just passed right by me because I don’t remember it. I am sure you would have known if there was a pool. That has been a discussion about whether or not there was a pool. No. You went to work at the telephone company while you were still in school and worked there for 35 hours a week. What were the hours that you normally worked? I worked full-time. I worked eight hours or more on the weekends and I worked five, sometimes six hours during the week. Can you describe what you did as the long distance operator? At the time, the operation of the telephone company was pretty old fashioned then. To get to long distance, you had to first get a local operator. That was back in the days when you said “number please” and “thank you.” Sometimes the wait was quite long just to get a local operator. It was not uncommon to wait thirty or forty minutes to even get an operator to put your number up. If you were calling long distance, you first had to get a local operator and she would transfer you to the toll board. Then lights would appear on the toll board and they would be picked up. You would record the information on a paper ticket and work from there. 3 This was in the days when they had the plugs and you just plugged in to the little holes with the lights? When the lights came on, that is exactly what you did. Nothing came directly into the toll board, but a few rarities. One of those was the “Flamingo Commissioners.” They were the bookies and they came directly into the toll board. They didn’t need to go through local. We had a list on our board of their numbers in Kentucky and in Ohio and in New York. They would come on the line and they would say, “Axtell One” and you would look at your paper and you would get that number for them. If it was busy, they said nothing and you went immediately to the next number and to the next number and to the next number until you got a number to answer because everything was vital that it get through. It was legal here, but it wasn’t legal out of state. Howard Hughes also had a couple of long distance lines into our board. He had his own private direct line? They were green lights from his hotel suite directly into our board. When you answered these lights, you went out on a circuit and you had to go through various cities to get to where you wanted to go? Yes, you did. If you were calling New York, you couldn’t get directly to New York. You would go through the RX operator. The RX operator, TX position, would answer you and she would ask where you were calling and you would say, “New York,” and then she would plug you through to New York. That’s how you got your number. There was not really anything, except maybe Los Angeles, that you got directly. You had routing to get to where you needed to go? Definitely. As a matter of fact, when a call was placed long distance you had to go to the rate 4 and route operator to find out what the places were to get there. She gave you the formula to go here, to here, to here? Yes. That’s the way you had to do it. Say the operator is in Chicago, then you asked her for the next point. When you got the next point, you would ask them for the following point and then the next time you would get your destination. That’s interesting. You mentioned Howard Hughes had a direct line. Where was Howard Hughes? Was he at the Flamingo? I believe he was at the Flamingo suite then. I know that he had unusual calling habits. I worked a lot of times on the weekends and during the summer at six o’clock in the morning. I would come in and relieve an operator and she would say, “He’s on the line and he’s been talking for two hours.” He was kind of a night owl. He could be on the line at any time. A lot of operators didn’t like to pick up that light because he was very demanding about his service. I enjoyed it a lot. I always thought it was a real challenge to put the call through for him. He got so he recognized me and he would call me his operator.1 Did he ever ask for you personally? As a matter of fact, he did ask for my name. In those days, you know, you just didn’t give out your name. It was a no-no. You couldn’t say who you were. I said, “I can’t do that.” He said, “I can’t believe that. I want it. Why can’t I have it? I said, “Because it’s just something that we don’t do.” But he always knew I was his operator. In those times, too, a lot of times if you were all out of circuits, and circuits were a premium trying to get to the east, you might meet an 1 Howard Hughes was one of the original investors in the Flamingo Hotel which was prior to his subsequent “residency” at the Desert Inn. See UNLV Library’s Digital Collections, at http://digital.library.unlv.edu/hughes/vegas.php, or the Nevada Humanities online encyclopedia, at http://www.onlinenevada.org/articles/flamingo-hotel 5 operator coming the other way who wanted the same circuit that you did. The rule was that you challenged filing times and the one that challenged first was usually the winner because it was your priority. Sometimes you had to cheat a little bit, too, you know. [Laughing] What you could do if they gave you their filing time first, you could cheat a little and get something earlier. He also used to say, “Well, you’re certainly a better operator than that particular operator.” I would say, “No, sir. I am just a better liar.” [Laughing] Did you ever fight over a circuit? Yes. There were times, I am sad to say, if you were desperate that you would do something like that. [Laughing] What was your age then, since you started during high school? Let’s see. I started in 1950. I just turned 17 in April and I believe I started in June. Did that make you the youngest operator? Pretty much. I was also promoted to toll supervisor the following year and I was the youngest toll supervisor that they ever had. How many employees did they have at that time? Could you break them apart by unit? They definitely had more local operators than they had long distance operators. I would say at any one time on the board there might be twelve or thirteen long distance operators, where the local operators at any one time might be twenty to twenty five. Where was the original telephone company located? It was located on Fourth and Carson Street. It was just a little building and it wasn’t in very good shape either. As a matter of fact, I can remember one time they broke a water main in the back of the building and the roof was so old that the water came through the roof. Everybody was running around trying to save the toll tickets because you had to evacuate the building and 6 save the rate books and try not to get electrocuted. It just wasn’t a very good building at all. It was little. It was cramped. It was dark. It was not much to look at. Just a few blocks up on Carson [from the phone company building], Carson Street became a dirt road back then. It was only paved a few blocks from the telephone company. What kind of facilities did they have for the people in this little building? Was there a lunch room? There was a little room in back of the wire chief’s office that had a couple of chairs and a broken down couch. That was just about all of the amenities. There was a restroom area with a couple of toilets, but it was certainly not anything that you would enjoy working in. Pretty primitive? Very primitive. The building housed the wire chief’s office and offices for the supervisors? Actually, the supervisors had no offices. There was no office. The chief operator had an office and that was it. The wire chief had an office where the people worked. Like test board worked out of it. It wasn’t an office per se, but they called it his office and that’s where the wire chief was and that’s were test board was. The only office they had was the chief operator’s office, but the supervisors had no office. They just stayed on the floor? They just came in, picked up their head set, and put it on. They didn’t sit the whole shift? They walked? They walked. You walked on a concrete floor, back and forth, in back of the operator. You stood your whole shift. Where there any educational requirements at that time? 7 No. I think they liked people to have a high school education, but it wasn’t necessary. You didn’t have to have a driver’s license because I didn’t have one and I was still going to school. I think that there were three paid holidays at the time. You worked six days a week automatically. There was no pay for a sixth day. You just worked it. Not too many years before I started there, even your training wasn’t paid for. You were trained and when they thought you were ready, then they put you on the payroll. I think that was probably only back in the ‘40s. Training was at your own expense? If you wanted the job, you had to go in on your own and learn how to do it and then, when you got proficient, then they started paying you? That’s the way it used to be. Probably five or six years before I started to work at the telephone company, the union was just starting up. If they wanted to work you to one o’clock in the morning and bring you back at six the next day, they could do it then. There were just absolutely no rules what-so-ever. Did they work split shifts there, too? Yes, there were a great deal of split shifts. How did they generally work? They had split eights, like eight to twelve and four to eight, and they had split nines, whatever that might be, and split tens. In other words, the operator would work from eight in the morning until twelve and then she would have a four hour period in between before coming back to complete her shift and she didn’t get paid for that extra four hours in between? No, no, definitely not. If it was too far to go home, of course the town was small then, but otherwise you would be 8 stranded and have to stick around in this small little building? Most people went home one way or another. You’re right, it was a small town, but even people that lived in Henderson that had a car would go home. Even people that lived in Henderson worked splits. They came in from Henderson? Yes. Can you recall what your starting rate was? Oh, yes, I most certainly can. It was 79 cents an hour. That’s when you got hired while you were working in high school? There were no laws at that time about students working at jobs? If there was, I didn’t really know about it. I think they probably liked you to work twenty-eight hours to make sure that you got benefits, but when you looked at it, there weren’t really any benefits. There was no pension. There was certainly not shift differential for working splits. There really wasn’t anything. As a matter of fact, until they started out with the union, it was just pretty much “whatever management wanted to do, they did.” You made supervisor within a year after you started working as an operator? Yes. What did you make as a supervisor? I think I ended up making, maybe, 25 or 30 cents more than an operator. A little over a dollar? Yes, something like that. There was no overtime paid at that time? If you worked over, you just got straight time? Yes, as I remember, that’s the way it was. Of course, nobody was really working overtime at 9 that time. Overtime started, really, when all hell broke loose. [In] about 1952, they started testing the atomic bomb and Camp Mercury and Camp Desert Rock came in to being. This telephone company was certainly not equipped to handle anything like that. It was just amazing - the amount of traffic and the interest that was generated. Everything was inadequate and there wasn’t anything we could do about it. When Mercury was built, then, how did they come into the board? They had direct lights, also, into the board. Mercury and Camp Desert Rock came directly into the board and, of course, they took priority. It was utter chaos because they called constantly. They placed long distance calls. They received long distance calls. It was just utter chaos. There wasn’t enough equipment. There weren’t enough operators. There wasn’t enough of anything to handle that sort of business. Calls that came from Mercury, did they also have to go through your board and back out to Mercury? Did they go directly, say, from California to Mercury? They came in in the inward position. They came in through your boards? On the local side they also had what they called inward positions. Anything that came in that needed to be rung, like Mercury, Camp Desert Rock, any of our tributaries, or even places like Tonopah, they all came through us. We would ring them through. They all came through Las Vegas. Your local board handled the inward board where everything came in in addition to all the local calls for the community? It also handled what we called the B board. In those days, when you came in on a local line and you wanted long distance, you had to be put up through the B board. Once you went to long distance, the long distance operator got your number and then she would go to the B board. The 10 code that you used to get the number, say 5889W, [was called by] the local operator [to] test that number and see if that number was busy. [This was done to be sure] that’s where the customer was actually calling from because no call was placed unless you were calling from the number you said you were calling from. There was no such thing as third numbers and other types of calls that we enjoy today? No, no. No technology what-so-ever. You actually had to place your call from the number? You didn’t go to a pay phone and say, “Bill it to my home,” or anything like that? You could try. You could do that and the operator would ring your home. If there was someone there to verbally OK it, then you could do it. If there was nobody home, it just couldn’t be automatically billed to your number. I could place a call from a pay phone and say bill it to my residence number and the operator would call my residence number and if somebody was there to say yes, you can bill it here, fine, then the call could go through. If there was no one there, you could forget making the connection. You said an interesting thing about the local numbers. There were “Rs” and “Js” on the end? Yes. “M,” “J,” “W,” and “R” were four digit numbers, usually. Actually, they were less than four digits when they started out, but they did have certain code rings. The “M” ring was one ring, and “J” was two, or whatever. When the local operator said, “Number please,” she had a set of keys in front of her and they had a bank of numbers. Our home number was 5889W. If someone called that, she would go to the bank marked, 58 and find the 89 and then stick the cord in the “W” and that made the connection. Not like today? 11 Nothing. Absolutely not. [Laughing] You briefly mentioned that a union was coming in ‘50s. Do you remember what the union was? Yes, it was the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers. It was Local 357, as a matter of fact. Things started getting a little better. More holidays that you were paid for and you had to have at least ten hours between shifts before they could bring you in. Because of the traffic coming from Mercury and Desert Rock and everything connected with the atomic bomb, it started what we called our “short [shifts].” There were just times that you needed coverage and a lot of that coverage was in the evening. They had shifts that started, say 4:30 to 10:30, and you could work six 4:30 to 10:30 [shifts]. That would be six six-hour shifts? Six-hour shifts with a half-hour lunch and you got paid for eight. You also got a shift differential on top of it. I can’t remember whether it was 50 cents or something for working those shifts. Those were probably prime and everybody tried for those? A lot of people liked them. A lot of people did like them. I didn’t. I was a supervisor and I was assigned 4:30 to 10:30. I really hated it because all my friends were getting off on the early shift and, by the time I got off at 10:30 at night, of course there was a lot going on in Las Vegas, but not with my friends because they were ready to go to bed because they had to come to work at 8:00 in the morning. You were single? Yes, yes. It was a difficult time. It was a prime shift. It was one that, you know, when your eighteen years old, nineteen years old, not a shift that you cared for. 12 Did you have a hard time getting a day shift? Eventually, I stopped being an operator all together and became a schedule clerk. I did the schedule for the operators. That was a day shift. In other words, you were the person that, at that point, decided how many were needed for this shift and how many split shifts? Actually, those decisions were made by the chief and the assistant chief. What they said is that you needed so many splits, so many eights, [and] so many sixes. Then those were bid by seniority. Then you scheduled those days and the release of them. Is that something that the union brought in, the idea of giving a shift by seniority? Pretty much because, before that, really and truly [it was just] whatever management wanted done was done. You really didn’t have a choice in the matter. If you wanted to work you had to work whatever they told you? Exactly. If you didn’t’ like what you had, there wasn’t even a possibility then of [changing it]? Maybe you could trade with somebody else or something. Maybe, you know, if you talked to somebody in charge and they were sympathetic enough, maybe you could [get a change.] It depended on management? Oh, yes, it really did. What about days off? Before the union, you said you only got one day off. You didn’t get two days off. They didn’t split up days or anything like that? After the union, did they get you a forty hour [work week with two days off]? It was a forty-hour week and you tried to get two days together. You had choices of days and Sundays became time-and-a-half. The days that might be split, if you wanted Sunday off, you 13 might get Sunday and the following Thursday or something like that. They weren’t always two days together. Was there extra pays then if your days were split up? No. Nothing extra? [Only for] different [shifts]. If you came in early in the morning, say [you were a] 6:30[shift], you got paid a differential. Late [shifts] and split[shifts], there was a differential for those[shifts]. Things started to get better, probably about 1954, when they brought in Mr. Weiler, Mr. H. G. O. Weiler. He was a consultant and he came from Washington. They named him the General Manager and they sold mortgage bonds. That’s when they started planning for a new building. Mr. Weiler was with the phone company? Yes, he was with the phone company. That’s when things were just so bad. The town was starting to grow because of the atomic tests. I think it’s the most amazing time. I can remember sitting on my front porch with my whole family. We lived on North Eighteenth Street and, 4:30 5:00 o’clock in the morning, when you knew the bomb was going to go off you would see the mushroom cloud. It was an awesome site to see above ground testing. Nobody told you that maybe you shouldn’t be out there? No. [Laughing] Nobody told the people in Utah because that’s where the winds were drifting to. Did it drift your way? No. It was majestic. It was totally awesome. I can still remember it and say it was a beautiful, awesome site. 14 You didn’t realize how deadly it was? No, certainly didn’t. We were still doing “number please” and “thank you” with all this growth. Once the bonds were sold, that’s when they started installing equipment for dial. Then they brought Bell people in to teach certain people the dialing system. I was one of the people chosen at the time to teach dial after I learned it. We converted the rest of the people and that’s how we started dial telephones. At this point, they started to have some type of training enter the job? Is that correct? Yes, they started to train. They absolutely had to because it couldn’t just be who you wanted or somebody’s whim. There had to be some sort of system. Traffic, which is what we call the amount of calls that came in, was just absolutely staggering. Something had to be standardized and something had to be done about it. I know it doesn’t sound so very long ago, but in 1955, when you think of all the towns in the United States that had dial, we weren’t one of them until then. We probably had about 25,000 customers then, at that point. I want to go back to this union for one minute. Did you join the union when they came to the company? Yes, I did. Did you have an active role in any of the activities of the union? Yes, as a matter of fact, I did. I held an office in the union and I was the secretary of the union for quite a few years. Later on, I became a union steward. I was quite active. I was also at a lot of contract negotiations at the time. You felt it was beneficial, then, for your job security? It was very beneficial. It was very beneficial. When you joined the union, where you still a supervisor or schedule clerk? 15 I was a schedule clerk. Did they allow management people to belong? Management people weren’t supervisors then. It was a fine line then, too. Supervisors didn’t join, but they were salaried so they really didn’t take part of it. They probably had at one time because they probably came up from being operators? Yes. The training they started at this time is kind of interesting. Did they have training for the operators before they went to work that was paid? Yes. You trained on your own? Well, I didn’t train on my own. I was paid. I started in 1950, but in the early ‘40s, they weren’t [offering paid] training. You were paid for your training. Do you remember how much training they gave you? I had three weeks of training. They took you through all the phases of what you would be doing? Yes. We had to memorize the book, specifically. I think I still have it around some place. You had to know all the abbreviations in California for all the cities. L.A. [inaudible] to La Jolla. Then you had to learn what their prefixes were. You memorized those and you had to know the prefixes in Los Angeles and the suburbs. Pretty much [all of] California. [End Tape 1, Side A] [Begin Tape 1, Side B] Before we changed the tape, Janet, we were talking about the training that you had to receive and that you had to do a lot of memorizing in order to perform the duties of the 16 job. You were saying that you had to memorize all the prefixes of the major cities? Yes. Not only the major cities, but what their abbreviations looked like. “SJ” you knew was San Jose. “SF” you knew was San Francisco. Everything in California had to be memorized, plus their prefixes. You were an instructor? Yes, I was an instructor. I instructed dial when it came to Las Vegas. I instructed a number of classes and, after instructing long distance classes, I became what they called a customer service assistant. We taught people how to work PBX. [PBX is a multiple line switchboard located at the customer’s premises. The PBX operator can connect calls to the phone extensions in the place of business.] All the major hotels at that time on the Strip, I opened those and taught PBX there and was there for the opening, but also small businesses. I remember the first one that I ever had to instruct on was Anderson Dairy. [They] had a new PBX. They told me it was a cordless PBX and I should go out and teach them how to work it. I had never seen a cordless PBX. They gave me a booklet to read. I read it and didn’t really understand it. Leroy Whitney, who later became Vice President of our Texas Division, was a PBX installer at the time. I didn’t drive at the time and they would have to pick me up. The lineman, or whoever was going that direction, would pick me up and take me to where I was going. I remember he taught me how to work a cordless PBX about five minutes before I had to teach an operator how to work a cordless PBX. [Laughing] I bet you kept the book handy. [Laughing] You went outside of the company? Yes. How many hotels were there in the early ‘50s? It’s hard to remember. There was the Sahara, the El Rancho, the Flamingo, the Last Frontier, 17 the Tropicana opened, the Hacienda opened, the Riviera, [and] the Sands. I taught PBX at all of them. Also, the Moulin Rouge. Did you teach at the Moulin Rouge? Yes. When they opened, I taught the operators there, too. It was very, very interesting work. I was offered a number of chief operator jobs on the Strip, too. Back in those days, loyalty was a very big thing. You just thought, “Well, they gave me my very first job. I couldn’t possibly leave the telephone company.” You were probably much wiser to do what you did because hotels would come and go? Well, you know some of those chief operators stayed there many years. Who knows, anyway, the choice was made. It was an exciting time. It really was. At the openings you got to talk to a lot of celebrities, meet a lot of celebrities and people in the news. It was exciting. When you worked and went to the hotels, you worked alone? You did not work in a work group? Pretty much. When you were working as an operator supervisor, what was the ethnic makeup of the work group? Were there minorities at that time that worked there? Actually not. I really cannot remember when we had our first black operator