Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SUNDAY, July 1, 1990                   TAG: 9007010266
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: D-3   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: RON BROWN STAFF WRITER
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

PHONE OPERATOR TO PRESIDENTS DIES IN FRANKLIN COUNTY

Youngs had served in the White House during the administrations of Presidents Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon.

She retired in the early 1970s just before the Watergate scandal ended the Nixon presidency. She served on the Committee to Re-elect The President in 1972.

Youngs, who was in a Franklin County home for adults at the time of her death, served more than 20 years at the White House.

She also had served as a switchboard operator for former American Motion Picture Association chief Jack Valenti.

Youngs came to Roanoke in the 1970s to live near her son, Bert Edwin Hall, who has since died.

Mildred Campbell, who worked with Youngs at the White House, remembers her as a steadying influence on younger operators.

As a senior operator, Youngs helped train beginners in efficiently running the White House switchboard.

"She was very intelligent. I thought she was the best," Campbell said.

She remembers Youngs providing her with moral support when Campbell took her first plane ride aboard the president's plane.

That plane ride took place in the late 1960s and the operators were en route to the LBJ Ranch in Texas, where the Johnson administration had temporarily set up shop.

"You're riding in style," Campbell recalled Youngs joking in an attempt to relieve her anxiety.

"I never rode a plane before," Campbell said. "I just felt more comfortable with her there."

During the Eisenhower years, switchboard operators often screened the calls for the president.

"You don't get that kind of service now," Campbell observed. "In our training, we were taught who to put through."

The operators would talk directly to the presidents.

"They were all very nice," Campbell said.

Youngs left her relatives boxes of memorabilia and pictures of herself with presidents and show business celebrities.

Among those mementos are seasonal prints of the White House autographed by several of the presidents. She also left a photograph of Bob Hope and President Truman. One photograph contains a picture of President Johnson with his beagle dogs. The beagles had signed the photographs with their paw prints.