Springfield Mayor Fordis C. Parker received the memento when city telephone service was established.
Robert Avery of the Turners Falls section of Montague holds a souvenir/plaque presented to Springfield Mayor Fordis C. Parker in 1927 in commemoration of the change to the telephone dial system. He hopes to find a home for it with someone who will treasure it.MONTAGUE – The year 1927 was one of connections: Charles Lindbergh made the first solo, non-stop trans-Atlantic flight; The Holland Tunnel opened between New York City and New Jersey; and the first transatlantic telephone call was made between New York City and London.
It was also the year people in Springfield were connected by dial telephone service.
Robert Avery of the Turners Falls section of Montague, himself one who appreciates connections among families and their historical treasures, has a small souvenir / plaque given to Springfield Mayor Fordis C. Parker in 1927, and he hopes to find a home for it where it will be valued.
“When I came across this, I thought it could be meaningful to someone,” Avery said, displaying the item that features a black dial from an old-fashioned telephone.
The dial is mounted on a chunk of wood, and on the front an engraved plate reads, “Presented to Hon. Fordis C. Parker Mayor of Springfield by The New England Telephone and Telegraph Co. at the time of the cut over to the dial system July 9, 1927.”
According to Guy McLain, director of the Merrie and Lyman Wood Museum of Springfield History, Parker was an important politician in the city, which makes the artifact interesting.
“The museum maintains a number of such artifacts commemorating important historical events,” he said. “This also documents changes in technology which have become increasingly important in history. Many times the only vestige of an event like this is a commemorative plaque or letter or similar item.”
Avery found the souvenir several years ago when he was cleaning out his uncle’s “cottage,” a home that was once Colton Hollow School in Monson. “Uncle Frank,” Eugene Francis Avery, a longtime tire salesman who lived at 850 Chestnut St. in Springfield, had gone to the place nearly every day to cut wood, put up bird houses, care for the grounds, relax and “get away from it all,” but never slept there, his nephew said.
Avery has no idea how the telephone artifact came into his uncle’s possession.
It was among a box of things Avery brought home from his uncle’s place. Avery kept it on the desk in his den, meaning to find a way to give it to a member of the Fordis family or someone else connected to it.
“I want to see if there is someone who can benefit from having it,” he said. “I could keep it as a conversation piece, but somebody would like to have it, especially the family of the mayor. It would be appropriate for them to have it.”
Avery, who was born 12 years after the 1927 “cut over,” knows if someone found something that had a connection to his father, Neil R. Avery, he would like to have it.
The elder Avery, now deceased, used to make lanterns, and his son treasures them, along with a large section of quilt his late mother, Leona A. Ladoucer Avery, made that now hangs in his home. He has a special case to display a cane Abraham Lincoln gave to his great-grandfather, Stephen Avery, for service in the Battle of Cedar Creek in the Civil War.
“Much of what I treasure will go down to our kids,” he said. “We have treasures; they come down through our family, and we send them down through the generations.”
Avery and his wife, Virginia, have three grown children and four grandchildren.
A retired guidance counselor and track and cross-country coach at Turners Falls High School, Avery has a special interest in Polish history and culture, an appreciation cultivated by marrying into the Potosek family. “I’m a Polish wannabe,” he said. He has traveled to Poland and even taught English there to Polish students in a summer camp.
Among his treasures are Russian military medals purchased in Poland.
Avery has an appreciation for history, and he hopes to share that by connecting the telephone souvenir with someone who will treasure it as he treasures his family heirlooms.
He may be reached at ravery@hotmail.com.