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At 96, this telephone pioneer is still answering the call.WEST FARGO — Elementary school paraprofessional Breck Bloom might have questioned his career choice, if only momentarily, that day in May at Bonanzaville USA's Telephone Pioneer Museum in West Fargo.“Come on, boys, we have to go.We’re going to miss the bus!” he said with a sense of urgency.ADVERTISEMENT The boys — South Point Elementary School fourth graders Cooper Larsen, Bauer Robertson, Asher Peterson and Walker Wavra — were having way too much fun to answer Bloom’s plea.After all, they were trying something completely foreign to them: dialing a rotary phone.“Remember, you have to pick up the receiver before you dial,” said the biggest kid in the room: 96-year-old John Bartholomay.Bartholomay has been volunteering at the museum since 1988, and few things seem to delight him more than introducing kids raised on smartphones to the click-click-click of a rotary dial.For a few extra minutes inside the phone museum at Bonanzaville USA, time stood still.The boys crowded around the old telephones while Bartholomay patiently demonstrated how to use a rotary dial, how party lines worked and how early phones, including a 1910 rural ringdown farm set, didn’t use numbers at all.“You’d turn it like this,” Bartholomay said as he cranked the handle on the side of the wall phone.“Your ‘number’ might be one long ring and one short.Your neighbor might be four long rings.” The boys were wide-eyed when Bartholomay said he used a phone just like this when he was a kid growing up on a farm in Leonard, N.D., in 1930s and '40s.ADVERTISEMENT While the group flirted with being late for the bus back to East Grand Forks, Bloom, who obviously appreciates his career choice, realized he was witnessing a pretty special hands-on history lesson.“It’s just a cool experience for them to listen to someone who is an expert in these phones from so long ago.It’s just awesome!” he said.Bartholomay is equally tickled by the kids’ curiosity.“It’s great,” Bartholomay said.“You can talk to them and show them how everything works and they really listen and want to try it all.” Inside the museum — which was built and is maintained by the Red River Valley Council of the Telephone Pioneers of America — are telecommunications artifacts from North Dakota’s earliest days, including switchboards, old telephone directories, pay phones and push-button models that once seemed impossibly modern.Some date back more than a century.Many of them still work because Bartholomay makes sure they do.The longtime volunteer has spent years repairing old phones, maintaining exhibits and teaching visitors how communication worked before smartphones fit into a pocket.His knowledge comes from a lifetime in the industry.Bartholomay began working for Northwestern Bell on Dec.13, 1948, fresh out of high school.ADVERTISEMENT “I got hired that same morning,” he recalled.Still in his teens, Bartholomay started as a cable splicer’s helper and spent the next 35 years with the company before retiring Dec.31, 1983 — the day before the AT&T system breakup took effect.In between came the Korean War.He and his twin brother Leo, who also worked for Northwestern Bell, were drafted and worked in communications in Korea.It was a family tradition, with nine of the 14 Bartholomay siblings serving in the military.After returning home, Bartholomay resumed his career with Northwestern Bell, eventually moving into maintenance, testing and engineering work.Over the years, he helped repair damaged cables, troubleshoot phone lines and design rural systems connecting communities across the region.Even in retirement, he never really stopped working.Five years after leaving Northwestern Bell, Bartholomay began volunteering at Bonanzaville.“It was something to do when I retired,” he said.ADVERTISEMENT That “something” turned into decades of preserving telecommunications history at the Telephone Pioneer Museum.Beth Jansen, executive director of Bonanzaville, said Bartholomay has become irreplaceable.“Oh, it’s amazing to have John here,” Jansen said.“He’s here for every single volunteer opportunity he has.” Not only does Bartholomay help maintain the building and repair delicate antique equipment with his fellow telephone pioneers, Jansen said, he possesses knowledge that is rapidly disappearing.“I have no idea who's ever going to be able to replace his work on these systems, because not even people retiring today know how to get them working,” Jansen said.That concern becomes obvious while watching him work.Bartholomay can explain not just what an old telephone looked like, but how it functioned, why it mattered and what it meant when a phone finally rang in a farmhouse miles from town.He teaches children how operators connected calls manually and how rural families once shared party lines with neighbors.He demonstrates each piece with the quiet confidence of someone who once helped keep an entire region connected.ADVERTISEMENT Jansen said the telephone museum is a favorite stop for adults who reminisce about chatting in telephone booths or talking for hours on pink Princess phones and for kids who stare at the old technology with pure curiosity.“They’ll ask, ‘What is this?How do you use this?’” Jansen said.“I know that most of the kids walking in would not know how to use a dial phone or even a push-button phone.Being able to try that brings this sense of wonder and amazement.” In some ways, the wonder mirrors the reactions people had when telephones first arrived generations ago.For children raised on smartphones and touchscreens, a rotary phone can feel almost magical.So can the man explaining it.At an age when many people have long since slowed down, Bartholomay — who turns 97 next month — still spends his summers opening the museum doors, greeting visitors and preserving pieces of history that otherwise might fall silent.As for those students from East Grand Forks, Bloom eventually convinced them to leave the museum.They thanked Bartholomay on their way out.(And they made their bus on time.) ADVERTISEMENT As for Bartholomay, he may very well still be at Bonanzaville’s Telephone Pioneer Museum as he inches closer to becoming a centenarian.He shrugged off the idea of retiring from volunteering anytime soon.When asked what he plans to do in the near future, the museum was his first thought.“Keep the door open, I guess,” he said with a smile.Long enough, perhaps, for a few more students to nearly miss the bus while dialing up a little history.