Couple displays vintage phones at library

In celebration of the Olympics, Ramona Library has a display of 1984 AT&T Olympic phones on loan from the collection of a couple who presented the telephone’s history at the library on Aug. 5.

The 1984 phones feature plates with Olympic sculptures on top. Sherri Esquibel, who owns the collection with her husband, Herman, explained that AT&T was a sponsor and provided communications for the summer Olympics that year, held in Los Angeles. There were seven sculptures including a discus thrower and an equestrian on square plates that could be screwed into the top of the phone, said Sherri.

The display will be in the library foyer until Aug. 31.

The Olympic phones represent only a small portion of the couple’s telephone collection. Both retired from AT&T after spending decades working primarily as engineers, he as a maintenance engineer and she as a switching engineer, for the phone companies. The Esquibels say they helped modernize the phone system for Ramona and other areas and want to preserve the history of the telephone.

“Keep alive the knowledge of what phones were like,” said Sherri.

They present their “Telephone Talk” to different groups. At senior citizen homes residents often remember the candlestick phones, said Sherri. On the other side of the spectrum, children are often amazed with rotary phones and the length of time it takes to dial a number, she said.

The Esquibels’ collection includes about 1,000 phones, signage, memorabilia, phone equipment, phone booths and a switchboard from the La Valencia Hotel in La Jolla. They brought a sampling of their collection for the talk at Ramona Library, taking audience members from a wooden box wall phone to the candlestick phones of the 1910s, then to phones of the 1950s that had ashtrays, to princess and trimline phones, and through the evolution of touch-tone and cell phones. The couple is scheduled to give a presentation to the Ramona Pioneer Historical Society on Oct. 18 in the Barnett Barn at the Guy B. Woodward Museum. The meeting opens at 6 p.m. with a potluck and the program will start around 7:30.