Series

Oral history interview with Helen G. Rees

• 1995-12-13 (Creation)

.1 cubic feet; 1 audiocassette (54 min., 13 sec.) + transcript (26 pages)

This oral history interview with Helen G. Rees was conducted by Anne Cummins at Rees' home in Fairview, Oregon, on December 13, 1995. The interview was conducted as part of the Rural Telephone Operators Oral History Series, which was a series of interviews about telephone operators in rural areas in the early 20th century, conducted by Anne Cummins in the early 1990s.

In this interview, Rees discusses her family background and early life in Sherman County. She also talks about the family background of William A. Rees and his early life in Shaniko. Rees then discusses her life in Shaniko after her marriage to William A. Rees. She speaks at length about the telephone system in Shaniko in the 1930s and early 1940s, describing how the system worked and the equipment used, and she talks about some of the telephone operators. She closes the interview by talking about the different ways the operators served the community beyond the job of answering and directing phone calls.

Copyright for this interview is held by the Oregon Historical Society. Use is allowed according to the following statement: Creative Commons - BY-NC-SA, http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/.

• English

Preferred citation: Oral history interview with Helen G. Rees, by Anne Cummins, SR 2004, Oregon Historical Society Research Library.

Forms part of the Rural Telephone Operators Oral History Series.

Finding aid based on DACS (Describing Archives: A Content Standard), 2nd Edition.

Sarah Stroman

• Rural telephone--Oregon--Shaniko
• Telephone operators--Oregon--Shaniko

• United States » Oregon » Wasco County (Or.) » Shaniko (Or.)

• Cummins, Anne (Contributor)

• Interviews