Cloie Bronson…She roomed 54 kids
By Eva Hallam Solberg
Published
in PCN
“Number please?” Cloie Bronson, Dodson’s one and only switchboard operator, voiced this query thousands of times over the years.
From 1940 until February of 1955, the corner of her dining room was taken up by the machine which made it possible for about 20 Dodson residents to have phone service.
She says she was not sorry to see it replaced by a dial system, though. “It kept me tied down so that I didn’t have time for anything else.”
Two weeks after the dial system came in, Cloie was faced with the serious injury and death of her husband, Alfred. He and two other Great Northern Railway section employees were riding a “speeder” car when an eastbound freight overtook them. The men jumped. Alfred hit his head and died a few days later.
Cloie was left alone after her husband’s death, with a big rooming house. Always busy caring for other people’s kids, fifty-four of them to be exact, she kept on over the years. Even now, at the age of 87, she still keeps a roomer or two. Not only school children needing a place to stay while attending high school, but also teachers, depot agents, fair employees and many others have called Bronson’s Rooming House “home”.