Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, March 23, 1992 TAG: 9203230150
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A9 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MONTY S. LEITCH
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
I think it unlikely I could have received a more informative or interesting letter than his.
"In 1941, a 17-year-old could not work in a factory." Bekius writes, "so I rode a bicycle for Western Union in Fort Wayne, Ind. Even with the extra bonus (I believe it was 35 cents), no one else would do it, so I became the singing telegram boy."
He's not sure why others were so reluctant to sing. "Maybe a combination of shyness and thinking it was a little silly," he told me in a phone conversation. He himself had sung in the church choir, but says he's not now - nor was he then - "exactly a singer." Nevertheless, he took on the job.
"There was a collection of little ditties from which one could choose a message for almost any occasion," Bekius continues in his letter. "They didn't come in very often, maybe two, or three a month. To "deliver" the telegram, I would ring the door bell (or knock as the case may be), ask for the addressee, step back and sing my little heart out for about four bars. Then I would tell them who it was from, give them the telegram and collect my tip, usually a dime."
As Bekius delicately puts it, "it's been a year or two" since he delivered a singing telegram. But as he remembers, the ditties were, well, a little inane. So much so they were transmitted by number: the sender made a choice from a list of ditties available, that ditty's number was transmitted, and, at the point of receipt, the ditty was printed out for the addressee. Often the sender and addressee were younger people, "a girlfriend or a boyfriend," Bekius says.
"There is only one singing telegram that I remember specifically," Bekius writes. "A man who had transferred from radio statio WOWO, Fort Wayne, to KDKA, Pittsburgh, composed a greeting to be sung to the tune of `Jingle Bells' (ending with ` . . . from old KD out here'). He wanted it sung at a Christmas party for the staff of WOWO. After I sang the greeting before this group of local celebrities, my hat was passed. The tip came to almost three and a half dollars! Unfortunately, I had a cold that day, so this `audition' did not resultin a career as a singing radio personality.
"I would like to add," Bekius continues in his letter, "that for a very religious young man raised in a very conservative home, delivering and/or picking up messages in every area of town and to all types of people was an extremely maturing experience!"
When I asked him in our phone conversation if he could expand on that, Bekius politely responded, "Not so you would care to put it in the paper."
But he does remember visiting prostitutes to pick up and deliver their permission slips for physicals. And he remembers his surprise at the depths of poverty he discovered in the less familiar parts of his hometown. "There were people who literally could not write out what they wanted to say," he says, and that surprised the youth.
Of course, "The hardest part of that job came after Dec. 7, 1941," Bekius writes, "when I had to deliver telegrams that began, `The War Department regrets to inform you . . . '" There was no singing then.
Bekius went on to two careers, one in the Air Force and another as a high-school math and science teacher in Alexandria. He retired to Salem about five years ago to be near one of his three married daughters. My thanks to him for sharing his memories.
\ AUTHOR Monty S. Leitch is a Roanoke Times & World-News columnist.
by CNB