Michael Minasi
Morris Bateman, right, hugs Vera Acrey, left, a former employee
and friend since 1951, during Bateman’s 100th birthday
celebration Friday at the Montgomery County Heritage Museum
Morris Bateman has witnessed firsthand the transformation the
communication industry has made from nearly the beginning.
Bateman, a longtime member of the Noon Lions Club, turns 100 years old
today and spoke a little about his 47-year career during a birthday
party at the Heritage Museum in Conroe.
“We were just a little, old country telephone company and had 630 phones
in the whole town,” he said. “Everything was on the (downtown) square.
It wasn’t in the shopping malls or four-lane roads. Everything was
country. It was an oilfield town is all it was. When old man (George)
Strake hit that oil out there, boy it was a busy, busy place.”
Early start
Bateman calls Lufkin his hometown. That’s where he went to grammar
school before completing high school in Nacogdoches.
After graduation, he went to Stephen F. Austin. That summer after his
first year, he decided to get himself a job. So, he started installing
telephones for the Conroe-Lufkin Telephone Exchange in 1938 at age 23.
He worked for them until World War II came along. He left to join the
Navy for three years.
“I said, ‘Well, I’m going to join the Navy and get me a girl in every
port.’ I never got on a boat to get to the ports,” Bateman said
laughing.
Instead, he inspected plane engines to make sure the electrical
functions worked.
“When they overhauled the plane, they tore the engine up and redid it –
generators, motors, wing flaps, everything,” Bateman said. “All the
motors had to be reconditioned. They had to come through my inspection
station to be perfect. We didn’t want any bad motors in the airplanes.
If the electric motor goes down, somebody’s in trouble.”
He stayed there for two years, often arguing with the civilian repairmen
about the condition of the engines, until he “got sick of it” and signed
up for sea duty.
However, he still didn’t make port. Instead, Bateman got packed down in
the basement below the bakery and spent the rest of the war as a steel
typewriter and teletype repairman.
The telephone company
After being discharged, he went back to his job in Lufkin, which had a
13-position switchboard. He was in charge of the whole office,
maintaining equipment and switchboards until the manager in Conroe “got
mad, put on his hat and left.”
“My boss over there said, ‘How’d you like to go to Conroe?’ I said,
‘Where’s Conroe?’” Bateman said. “I had never heard of it. I came over
here and lived in a hotel for a while until I took over the telephone
company. It wasn’t but me, the switchboard operators and another
employee.”
The company didn’t have a truck either. They gave Bateman $100 a month
to make up for the use of his personal vehicle, as they did with another
employee from Willis.
One of his former switchboard operators, he fondly refers to them as “my
girls,” Vera Acrey made an appearance at his party. They’ve been friends
since she moved to Conroe in 1951.
“He was a great boss when I worked for him all those years,” she said.
“He never said anything (mean) to me.”
The business in Conroe grew as the town did. So much so that he had to
install smaller operating stations in the areas around town like Walden,
April Sound, Cut and Shoot and River Plantation.
“What made this town was Lake Conroe,” he said. “… At one time, I had
four construction crews, plus my own crews, doing nothing but putting up
telephone lines. We just couldn’t put them up fast enough. They’d put up
125 houses out there and they all want a phone. Well, I had to put a
line up for each phone.”
Bateman said the town was still more centralized at the time. People
went to town on Saturdays to get their groceries and politicians held
pie and cake auctions to raise campaign funds.
“Conroe is a different place now,” he said. “Traffic is everywhere. I
like the good, old days because there wasn’t all that traffic; it was
easy to get around.”
Bateman also noticed what’s become of the telephone communication
industry. He worked in the field until his retirement at age 70 in 1985.
“When I started, you twisted a crank and the operator would plug in a
little white light (popped up) and she said, ‘Number please.’ (The
caller said), ‘44.’” Bateman said. “She’d plug in 44 and rear back on
the key and ring it. Simple, simple.
“What really brought this world to satellite is the moon. Everything
they built to get that shuttle to the moon and back we’re using now –
satellite systems, computers, GPSs on cars. My son got one on his car;
he can pull up a house in Houston and go right to it. Used to, you hoped
you got there.”
He recalled the Dick Tracy comic strip and how technology dreamed up in
what was then fantasy is now reality.
“He had a phone in his watch and he’d say, ‘Calling all cars, calling
all cars’ into his wristwatch,” he said. “They have those real now. I’ll
tell you, this world – I’m glad I lived long enough to see some of it.
When I was in the telephone business, you picked up the phone or cranked
a dial and you got the operator. Now you punch a button.”
Even though Bateman is 100 now, he said he doesn’t have any aches or
pains and takes one pill a day. He lives in Conroe with his wife of 24
years Barbara. He has one son, Butch, and three grandchildren Hailey,
Steele and Hudson.
Bateman thanks his genes and “the good Lord” for doing most of the work.
“I had a big birthday cake out at Lions Club the other day and I had
100, 1-0-0 on there. I said, ‘Let me tell you guys something. Let’s make
the most of right now to put 1-0-1 on that thing next year.’ One more
year, I’m going to go one more year at a time. That’ll do me good.”
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