by Brianne Grimstad
From the time that she was a young girl, Jane (Buntrock) Tepesch says she knew she wanted to be a telephone operator. “When you saw the pictures in the magazines, they looked so kind and helpful,” she says of what inspired her to follow her dreams.
When Jane was a teenager, Marian (Moyer) Smedsrud worked as an operator and one Saturday she brought Jane with her to work. Jane said she sat in a chair with a headset on and observed how the operators worked the switchboards. “Back then, the head sets covered the ears entirely,” Jane explained.
When asked if she could hear what was being said in her headsets, Jane couldn’t. “I had the holes turned to the outside,” Jane laughed. She had been wearing the headset wrong.
In June of 1954, Jane went to work for Northwestern Bell at the age of 18 years old. The office was located above the Chevrolet Garage at the time, on the second story.