THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, April 22, 1995 TAG: 9504210067
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E1 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Column
SOURCE: Larry Maddry
LENGTH: Medium: 93 lines
ON A WARM SPRING DAY in 1936 Damon Coble came face to face with Franklin Roosevelt.
He was so touched by what he saw that even now - 50 years after FDR's death - his voice quavers when he speaks of it.
Coble, 86, was a young man at the time and had only seen the president in theater newsreels. But a bit of luck placed him beside the great leader with the jaunty smile and heavy metal braces on his legs.
Coble was a Norfolk Western Union telegrapher who was sent to Orlando in late 1935 to handle the surging demand for telegrams created by the rich who wintered in Florida even during the Depression. He stayed until the spring of 1936.
``My manager asked me several days beforehand to cover an appearance by Roosevelt at Rollins College in Winter Park, Florida,'' he recalled.
You can close your eyes and almost see Coble, then in his 20s, receiving the news, staring into his boss's eyes with jaw agape.
``He said it was a very important assignment. And he told me not to drop the ball. I was very nervous about it. . . . Had never done anything like that.''
On the day that Roosevelt was to make his speech at the college, Coble's boss gave him the keys to his Star automobile, a fancy vehicle in those days. He had gotten a Secret Service pass with a stamped number on it.
His responsibility was to telegraph the stories written by reporters from the New York Times, the Chicago Tribune, Boston Globe, The Washington Post and several other newspapers that had purchased time from Western Union for transmission of their copy.
He drove to Winter Park with two assistants who would help him handle the many pages of typed newspaper copy expected to be filed via Western Union when Roosevelt's speech was made.
``We got over there at about 11:30 to get acquainted with the reporters and set up our equipment in a press room that was off the main auditorium where the president would speak,'' he said.
Coble said telegraphers were not usually placed near the president because the cacophony of clacking Morse code keys would smother FDR's voice.
Western Union was very important for communication back then, he recalled.
``There was very little radio. And of course, no TV. Our instruments had been installed the previous day. I used a Vibroplex, a semi-automatic key considered to be the Cadillac of Morse instruments.''
Wearing his best sport coat - `` I didn't want to look like a tramp around the president'' - he mingled with the reporters before seating himself at a long table with his key and sounder before him. A wire was run to a terminal outside the building where it was joined with a copper wire stretching to his office in Orlando. From there, his dots and dashes would be carried by a main wire stretching up the Atlantic Coast for more than 1,000 miles to New York.
There was a great commotion in the auditorium a few minutes before 1 p.m. when someone announced that FDR had arrived.
Coble was as excited as anyone in the building and stepped to a door off the press room where he could see the long corridor FDR would use approaching the auditorium.
``I was standing in the doorway watching when I looked up the corridor and saw him walking down it,'' Coble recalled. ``He was walking by himself which surprised me. There were Secret Service men standing at each end of the corridor but he was all alone walking toward me. He carried a cane with a leather strap connecting to his wrist, using it to move along. It was a struggle for him. You could see that in his face. His steps were short only covering about 6 inches. He labored heavily and it took about two minutes for him to get to where I stood. Such strength and determination in his face.
``When he passed he was so close I could have reached out and touched him. I wanted to do that but was afraid I'd upset his equilibrium. Our eyes met and he gave me a little smile. And when he passed there were tears in my eyes.''
Tears?
``Yes, tears. It seemed to me that I was looking at a man with an extreme handicap who had taken the weight of the world on his shoulders. You had to live in those times to understand. People looking for jobs to keep from starving. You'd see people with malnutrition so acute their fingernails dropped off. Terrible. He was carrying those people on his shoulders in a way.''
Coble cannot remember a line of the thousands of words concerning the president's speech that he tapped in dots and dashes onto the wires that day.
He returned to Orlando in the Star at about dark. By then FDR's train had steamed up the tracks and was gone.
His opinion of Roosevelt is even higher now. ``He was trying to prevent a revolution that would have taken us into socialism, maybe even communism,'' he said. ``I could see how he suffered with every step he took in that corridor. It's a wonder, a wonder he took that job.''
Coble lives in the Norview section of Norfolk and is president emeritus of the Tidewater chapter of the Morse Telegraph Club. He considers himself lucky to have had his telegraphy job during the Depression. He was paid at his regular rate for FDR's visit. Forty cents an hour. by CNB