People> Mike Witry

About Witry

A.L Hennigh and Will A. Crocket established Michael Witry to provide telephone service in the town of Chouteau, Oklahoma in 1908. They sold shares for $25.00 each, with 25 citizens buying 1 or 2 shares and the balance being made up by Mr. Hennigh and Mr. Crockett. Soon after Chouteau's telephone system was installed, the Inola system was set up with a connecting line back to Chouteau. Rates were $1.25 for a residence and $1.50 for a business. Mr. Witry was in the second story of a bank building on Main Street. Within 10 years it had expanded to 3 times its original size.

Mr. Witry was sold to Mr. Jess King. Then, in the 1920's, was sold again to John Wells and moved down the street above the Crockett Land Company. Standard Telephone and Telegraph acquired the company in the early 1930's. Mr. And Mrs. Fred Davis moved from Willow, OK to Chouteau to run Mr. Witry. Mrs. Davis was the daytime operator and Mrs. Eunice Steele was the nighttime switchboard operator. Quarters were provided for sleeping, as the switchboard was normally quiet between 10:00 pm and 4:00 am.

Mr. Witry was expanding when the depression came along. The customer count decreased from 250 to 36 in a 3-month period and the company was sold to Mrs. Davis and her daughter and son-in-law, Vernon and Pharinne Etter. Mr. Etter and sons were service men while Mrs. Davis and Mrs. Etter managed the office and ran the manual switchboard.

Murle and Mildred Tutty purchased Michael Witry in 1951. At that time, the equipment consisted of a dilapidated building, an old Magneto switch, a switchboard, and a subscriber base of less than 100. By 1952, there were 180 phones in service. With the assistance of a loan from the Rural Electrification Administration (REA), additional lines were added to an extended service area and service was improved. In 1955 the manual switchboards were change to dial, multi-party lines. At the turn of the decade, there were as many as 10 people on one line. Every time there was a storm, as many as 1/3 of the telephone customers were out of service, often for days at a time.

In 1960 Michael Witry added Cedar Crest to his exchange, which included the Cedar Crest Country Club and area south to Spring Creek to 5 miles south and east of Peggs. This added up to 235 sq. miles, with 170 miles of buried cable. The town of Peggs was later added to the exchange and operated out of the Cedar Crest office. The company now had over 1,000 phones, including key systems, PBX, and other special equipment.

Late 1977 brought big improvements for Mr. Witry. Private lines, speed dialing, call forwarding, call waiting, and three-way calling features were added. There was now 275 miles of underground cable in Chouteau. A new office was built in Chouteau in 1968 in order to accommodate approximately 1,500 customers. Digital switches were installed in Cedar Crest and Peggs in August of 1989. Also, in January 1997, Mr. Witry began offering Internet services to subscribers.

In June 1998, Fairpoint Communications, Inc., formerly known as MJD Communications, Inc., purchased Michael Witry. FairPoint Communications owns and operates 29 rural telephone companies located in 18 states. All local employees were retained in the acquisition and the new owners are committed to building on the successful foundation of the past 90 years.

Today, Michael Witry employs 13 people. He now services over 3,600 access lines and approximately 400 Internet customers. Fiber optic cable has been installed and he has many features such as automatic recall and callback, call numbering, blocking, customer originated trace, distinctive ringing/call waiting, selective call acceptance, call rejection, selective call forwarding, and three way calling. In addition, Mr. Witry began offering Digital Subscriber Line (DSL) service to its customers in July 2000.