History's calling at the Telephone Museum of New Mexico

While it might be hard to believe for the younger visitors to the Telephone Museum of New Mexico, there was indeed once a time when phones didn’t have screens and were attached to walls.

“A 17 year old the other day comes in and wants to know what dial tone sounds like,” said Susie Turner, the museum’s director and treasurer.

For more than 26 years, the museum has been home to historical communication equipment, unique exhibits and educational displays.

Located at 110 Fourth NW, just north of Central, the museum is staffed entirely by volunteers and housed in a building that dates back to 1906.

Comprising three floors, the museum offers a variety of displays and exhibits that appeal to all age groups, including an interactive display that tells the story of how a switchboard operator was able to call nearby Deming for help during Pancho Villa’s raid on Columbus in 1916; and a station where children can learn how to become a 911 dispatcher.

Turner says the museum's tour is "a wonderful experience for kids. A museum is a slice of our past, and how far we’ve come needs to be appreciated.”

A longtime Mountain Bell employee, Turner worked in the telephone business for 27 years in New Mexico prior to her involvement with the museum. In 1997, she joined her longtime friend and museum founder Gigi Galassini in an effort to collect and preserve historic items related to the telephone business from around New Mexico.

A former AT&T employee, Galassini was worried these items would be lost to history after the technological advances rendered them obsolete. With that in mind, the idea to create a museum to preserve that history was born.

Over time, they got donations by people from Socorro to Santa Fe, from Roswell to Farmington, "and we went, 'now what do we do with all this stuff?’” Turner said.

Turner began writing letters to than AT&T Chairman Charles Brown about her interest in acquiring the building where the museum is now located in order to display these donated items. The building had served as Albuquerque's AT&T building into the 1970s.

“She just kept persisting,” said Tom Baker, president of the museum’s board. “She wanted this building and finally, Charlie Brown goes to one of his cohorts and says, ‘This lady had been bugging me about this building in Albuquerque. Go ahead and give her whatever she wants.’”

With its new home secured and some permanent roots Downtown, the museum began to flourish.

Though Galassini passed away five years ago, and her memory and passion for the preservation of telephone history in New Mexico remains at the core of the museum’s mission.

That same passion can be seen in the 90-year-old Baker.

“I can pass my knowledge on and hopefully (people) say, ‘there was somebody who cared enough,” Baker said tearfully.

For 43 years, the telephone business was all Baker knew. During his career, he went from his home state of Pennsylvania to New York, and finally to Albuquerque, where he’s lived since 1970. Along the way, Baker worked almost every job imaginable, from searching for areas to place new telephone poles, to working on the telephone poles, and finally to servicing towers on top of the Sandia Crest.

In 2004, Baker and his wife decided to visit the telephone museum. That was it for Baker, who became a museum volunteer and has stayed ever since.

“I didn’t want to become a couch potato,” Baker said, laughing. "I enjoy working."

So, 26 years in, the museum still has plenty of years of life expectancy. It is 10 years in on a 99-year lease its the building.

That might sound like a job to most, but for Baker, it’s a labor of love. “I’d like to have people come and see,” he said.