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Conroe's Telephone Man turns 100
by Stephen Green
 


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.”

Conroe Courier

December 12, 2015

 

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