Memorable telegrams (#65, Topic I)

Today's Washington Post reports that Western Union, founded in 1856 to deliver telegrams, stopped operations last Friday, 1/27/06. So, an invention by Samuel Morse that began in 1844 in USA, ended. Jogging my memory, several memorable telegrams came to the fore. The last telegram I sent before leaving China was in September 1949: to my father in Shanghai, sent from Hong Kong, informing him of my imminent departure to USA. To send a telegram in China at that time, I must first convert each character into a 4-digit code, using a special dictionary designed for this very purpose. The telegraphic office in Shanghai would decode my message before delivery to my father. Fully expecting to telegraph my father again, I packed a copy of this dictionary; I still have it with me. But, a few months later, in May 1950, Shanghai was liberated; I was never able to cable -- or see -- my father again. The saddest telegraph I ever received was from Shanghai to me in Srinagar via my wife in Seattle, informing me that my father had passed away. That was July 1970, I was staying at the Oberoi Palace Hotel, as a Ford Foundation Visiting Professor to IIM-Calcutta, offering a seminar in Kashmir. One of the happiest telegraphs I ever received was at the registrartion desk of Brown Hotel in London in June 1995, upon returning from a World Bank assignment in Ostrava, Czechoslovia. It was from our daughter and son-in-law, informing me that our first grandson, Maxwell, was born.
Posted at 9:35 pm, Friday, February 3, 2006