Person:Winnifred Hay (2)

Winifred Hay moved with her parents from Rochester Michigan to Lansing Michigan in about 1933. Her mother, Mabel Hay, had worked on William Comstock's Michigan gubernatorial campaign and had been asked to work as his personal secretary while he was governor. Winifred took a job as a telephone operator for Michigan Bell Telephone Company at the age of seventeen and worked for the phone company for over 30 years. At the time of her retirement she was head supervisor.

She asked me in the 1980's what a "fax" was. I told her that it was a way to send pictures or documents over the telephone lines. She said that they were able to do that in the 1940's by appointment only because it required someone to physically hold four telephone lines together at each junction. It was done to send newspaper pictures across country.