If you called directory assistance in Leflore County in the 1970s, chances are a celebrity answered the line.
Most of them were women: Bette Davis, Doris Day, Joan Crawford, Julie Andrews and others. But while the names were famous, the voices had a familiar drawl.
The lone male operator called himself Michael Redgrave, the famous British actor who chalked up numerous Shakespearean roles in his day. The voice behind that name was Ronnie Rodgers, who now operates the phones at the Leflore County Courthouse.
The names the BellSouth operators gave were aliases, of course, assigned to protect the operators from prank calls, indecent proposals and stalkers. The association with Redgrave flattered Rodgers, who is an adoring fan of high art.
"They gave it to me because I enjoy the arts so much, and he was the only classical actor they knew," Rodgers said. "So they decided to give me the name Michael Redgrave, and that stuck."
Rodgers' accent is not at all British, but his voice is somewhat locally famous. For more than 15 years, he has operated the phones at the courthouse. In the late 1970s, he answered 411 calls for five years - "five long years, at that," he says.
Rodgers answers the phone now with a "Good morning, Leflore County" or "Good afternoon, courthouse," or, if it's in-house, just "Operator." The laconic style conveys the efficiency of an automated recording. Calls come in sometimes three or four at a time, and the voices on the line have jobs to do. Deeds must be notarized, taxes assessed, court documents filed. And besides, Rodgers realizes this is a "business phone" he's using.
"The phones get hectic - very hectic - but it's my job," he said.
There is really only one way to distract him from transferring the call promptly. When anything involving "the arts" comes up in discussion - and most conversations with Rodgers stray to the arts - his voice assumes the garrulous authority of a critic, waxing forth with an eloquence matched only by the works he admires.
"My favorite composer is probably Puccini because he was the romantic," Rodgers explains. "Puccini had a knack for making people cry, which I normally do if it's a very sad opera. He had a knack for making the violins sing to where you would weep at a performance, and if you've got a great singer, they can do this. You will cry."
When Rodgers isn't answering the daily din of a telephone receiver, his ears are tuned to more majestic voices that sing from his radio, those of Domingo and Pavarotti and Birgit Nilsson. He is a member of the Opera Memphis Guild. When the Metropolitan Opera used to stop in Memphis during its annual spring tour, he rarely missed a season. He still listens to the Met on the radio religiously every Saturday afternoon.
At performances in memphis, Rodgers' voice can often be heard discussing the evening's libretto with the production crew and greeting the musicians, according to Greenwood attorney Wally Stuckey. As a lawyer, Stuckey frequents the courthouse, and as an opera lover, he likes to stop by the operator's desk behind the front entrance to talk music. He and his wife take Rodgers to the opera now and then. The first time, they were surprised to find out he was a fixture there too, Stuckey said.
"We had what I would call average seats, but he has a reserved seat on the first row, and that's where he sits," Stuckey said. "The people who run the Memphis Opera, they know Ronnie. He speaks to them, and they speak to him, and they really enjoy him."
Stuckey said Rodgers enriches a trip to the opera. "Ronnie is such a fan of it, we enjoy taking to him because he knows the libretto, and we've gotten a lot out of going with him because of his knowledge about the opera."
Rodgers also supports the arts locally. For years, he helped bring in Community Concerts, a program that brought in the Boston Pops, the Joffrey Ballet and other world-renowned acts.
He is a member of Matinee Musicale of Greenwood, a music appreciation and performance club.
He even dabbles in the arts himself. His voice can be heard singing bass in the choir at the Episcopal Church of the Nativity.
He's a man of many other passions too. He loves Egyptian antiquities, broadway shows, the pulse of New York City, his cat Sunburn "and, of course, the zoo," he said. "I dearly love the zoo."
Rodgers' passion for classical music began during his childhood on West Market Street. His neighbor, Vivian McLemore, would invite him over to listen to operas with her nephews, Bill and Harold Fiore.
"We were the best of friends," Rodgers recalls. "They would invite us over, and we would hear complete operas."
Most children didn't care for opera, he said, but something about it captivated the neighborhood boys. They loved the grandeur of the Met broadcasts, the poignant inflections in the great singers' styles and the challenge of picking out the stories. "We would listen, our eyes wide as saucers, because it was so interesting and so beautiful," said Rodgers.
As an adult, he has seen the source of his sublime Saturday afternoons, twice in person. Rodgers counts his first trip to the Metropolitan Opera in New York City as "a dream come true."
"That first time I went to the Met, it was thrill after thrill after thrill," he said.
His childhood friend, Jimmy Wooten, who was tuning pianos for the Met at the time, reserved tickets for the opening night of "Turandot" by Puccini. The performance was sold out, Rodgers remembers, and as he approached the theater, scalpers were offering $5,000 for a single ticket. Rodgers refused.
"I said, 'No way. This performance is too important.' There was just no way that I was going to give that performance up."
The decision was "definitely" worth the $5,000 Rodgers could have made, he said. The actress Elizabeth Taylor, the real one, was in the house studying Ava Monton in the lead role for an upcoming film version of the piece. Placido Domingo was performing, as well as a fading Nilsson, one of opera's most celebrated singers.
"They gave her a standing ovation," Rodgers said. "It was the most lavish production."
Whether it's Ava Monton singing the lead in "Turandot" or a local attorney calling for the circuit clerk's office, Rodgers never forgets a good voice.
He grew up in an era when operators kept single communities connected. They were stationed in front of an enormous switch-board tangle of cords, pulling and plugging them by the sound of the voice on the other end of the line.
The hardware Rodgers handled at BellSouth wasn't so primitive, but his relationship with the voices he answered was old-fashioned. "By growing up in a small town, everybody knew practically everybody, give or take a few people," he said. "Most of the people who called would either recognize my voice or I would recognize their voice."
Some voices he didn't recognize would call with bizarre queries. They evidently thought operators had minds like encyclopedias, Rodgers said. Some answers he didn't have.
"I even had this one lady call me and say, 'How many eggs do you put in a cake?' I thought, 'Give me a break.'
"One guy wanted to know how long it would take for him to travel from the earth to the moon. I said, 'Well, if you actually believe you can do that, then let's put it down as the 12th of never because I have no idea.'"
Rodgers doesn't get those requests today, and the switchboard on his desk is an extended panel of translucent buttons connected to a fiber-optic phone system that was just installed last year.
He runs the device as adroitly as a composer fingering a keyboard. A line doesn't ring before Rodgers answers it. His opus is a symphony of blinking lights and a chorus of cheerful, curt or sometimes distracted hellos. The buttons flash, and without even seeming to look, he picks up the receiver.
Still, the modern technology has not streamlined Rodgers' relationship with all his callers. Nor have the changing times altered his taste in what he terms "good music." He has taken upon himself the role of evangelist for that music.
"I try to instill in people about classical music, how beautiful it is and how soothing," he said. "If they would only give it a chance and listen to it, they would change their mind about it."
He often tried to spread that news in high school, only to be ignored or refuted. Most of those ears were too consumed with rock and roll to be trained on anything else, he said.
"And then, later on, when we were grown, they would come back and say, 'Ronnie, thank you for telling me about classical music. You were right. It wasn't some "thing." I was so glad you told me about the importance of classical music.'"
The importance of classical music, for Rodgers, has as much to do with its longevity as its melodies and intricate variations. Those strains have survived many other music forms. They were here long before the invention of the instrument with which Rodgers conducts his work, and they have carried through new advances in its technology. They were around before the Leflore County Courthouse, or any other courthouse in the country, was built. And they will likely be around when it crumbles to dust.
"That's the reason it's classical - because it stood the test of time," Rodgers continued. "It's not on the charts for three or four weeks. Some of the music has been around for 500, 600 years, maybe longer. And so, it's so important."
