. Bell telephone magazine . there, onthe morning of De-cember 14, about , that operatorLaVonne Daczewltzhad smelled Holstrom, cen-tral office mainte-nance man, found the basement fullof smoke. The fire department ar-rived quickly, later was joined byElmwood Park, Franklin Park, May-wood, and Chicago departments. Butit was no use—the five operators onduty had to be ordered from thebuilding. The clock hands showedit had been stopped at 3 :20. It had been less than an hour afterLaVonne smelled smoke, we learned,that calls organizing reconstructionwent out from nearby suburbs. The n
. Bell telephone magazine . there, onthe morning of De-cember 14, about , that operatorLaVonne Daczewltzhad smelled Holstrom, cen-tral office mainte-nance man, found the basement fullof smoke. The fire department ar-rived quickly, later was joined byElmwood Park, Franklin Park, May-wood, and Chicago departments. Butit was no use—the five operators onduty had to be ordered from thebuilding. The clock hands showedit had been stopped at 3 :20. It had been less than an hour afterLaVonne smelled smoke, we learned,that calls organizing reconstructionwent out from nearby suburbs. The night before, Friday, had beena night out for many employees ofthe Illinois Bell In Chicago. Theyhad stayed late at a Pioneer dinneror a plant union meeting, thinking tosleep late on Saturday. But theyshook off pleasant sleep and rose upto meet the emergency. By 5 additional lights came on inLoop offices as engineers went Intoaction. Telephone company cars andtrucks began to roll in the darknesstoward River The challenge of the crisis spreadquickly to the Western Electric Com-panys nearby Hawthorne Works, ItsKearny (N. J.) Works, and its Chi-cago distributing house; and to thefar-away offices of the AmericanTelephone and Telegraph Companyand of Bell Telephone too had to supply help and ma-terial for River Grove. Later weobserved the results of these wide-spread efforts; but from the ruins wefollowed the story to what had beenthe site of the first reawakening ofphones in the suburb a few hoursafter the fire—a small telephone com-pany business office two blocks awayon Grand Ave. In this office, designed for perhapshalf a dozen persons, we found atleast 75. They were plying plugs,pencils, screwdrivers, and numerousother tools and pieces of equipment,some of which I still cannot newspaper days I had seen many a 240 Beil Telephone Magazine WINTER crisis in the news room. The activityin that little business office approxi-mated what wo
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