"Am I talking to a real person?”
Employees at Peninsula Telephone Company commonly hear these seven words when a new or future client calls for help or information. The small, nine-person company serving the northern two-thirds of the Old Mission Peninsula successfully merges high-touch with high-tech in today's fast-paced world.
Celebrating 100 years in business in 2006, the family-owned business has approximately 1,650 customers and is at least familiar with every one of them. Forget impersonal hold, endless computer menus or voicemail limbo, Peninsula Telephone employees are part of the tight-knit rural community — and they answer the phones themselves.
"In fact it surprises me that so many people come into the office to pay their bills,” said co-owner Vi Solomonson, of the many customers who stop by to chat every month.
Vi and her husband, Jack, are closing in on sixty years at the helm since they moved into the company home on Center Road in 1949 and assumed 24/7 switchboard duties for about 260 homes. They connected customers or placed long-distance calls to Traverse City and beyond, which sometimes required a three-hour wait.
"People were considerate, unless it was a real emergency they wouldn't call after 10,” Vi said of evening duties.
Stringing wires, writing bills and toll tickets by hand, untangling above-ground lines with a long stick, helping kids with homework (Vi handled English and History and Jack did math) — the Solomonsons' job descriptions during those first decades could have been summarized as "whatever is needed.” The couple even housed a very pregnant woman during the dead of winter because storms often blocked roads north of Mapleton where she lived and she did not want to be cut off from the hospital.
"The telephone was different than it is today, it was the community center,” said Jack, a Traverse City Senior High graduate who learned the electronics trade while serving in the Navy. "Phones were more of a help to people than just chatting.”
"Years ago we knew everybody so well, they were like family,” he added. "When the roads were bad, we would have people stop by and wait until the plow went by.”
Mary Jo Lance, the Solomonsons' daughter and co-worker, is compiling a history of the company in honor of the centennial. After asking customers for pictures and stories and sifting through their own treasures, she is completing a document that traces the evolution from serving a handful of customers through today's high-speed internet access, fiber-optic underground network and cellular services.
"He's always been right up to speed or one step ahead,” said Lance of her father, who has guided the company for more than half of its life and is now considering high-speed video and Voice-Over-Internet Protocol (VOIP.)
Managing technologies not-yet-dreamed of when they took over the company is a long way from some of their early challenges — even for experienced telecommunications veterans of 60 years ago. A St. Francis High School alumna, Vi began working for Michigan Bell during World War II her sophomore year. After marrying Jack, the couple moved to Chicago where Vi transferred to Indiana Bell and Jack worked as an engineer at Western Electric. An impending baby prompted a move home and they began their calling with Peninsula Telephone.
Vi recalls how in those early months as switchboard operator she was a little too enthusiastic in sending the special fire department tone from her switchboard.
"They told me you have to give a long ring to get their attention about a fire,” she said. "So I gave a real long ring and the guy said, "If they'd stop ringing the damn phone we could answer it and find out where the fire is.'”
The Solomonsons moved out the business of their home into a modern facility in 1989. Nestled in an old apple orchard on Peninsula Drive, the brick building hums with the latest technology. A nod to their history is a collection of phones from 'crankers' and rotary dial to pay and princess displayed prominently in the main office, not to mention a large switchboard similar to the one that they used for so many years.
The cutting edge precedent began during the 1950s when the company began offering dial service to its customers — five years ahead of Traverse City. The company went to no long-distance charges to Traverse City in 1965, offered touch-tone one-party service in 1975 and internet service in 1991.
Jack estimates that about 36 rural independent telephone companies remain, including ones in Kingsley, Kaleva and Alba, and they all help each other. The couple figures that their remote location is a huge disincentive to larger phone companies, who have consolidated and conglomerated for decades.
"They don't try to get us because we're a dead end,” noted Vi.