Photograph of Lydia Gelinas of Nashua NH, New Hampshire’s first ‘Hello Girl;’ from a 1918l Nashua newspaper.
In a previous story 2 years ago I wrote about Agnes Theresa (Houley) O’Brien, a Groveton NH woman who moved to Boston and eventually ended up in Europe working for the United States Army as an telephone operator there. Agnes was not sent to France until October of 1918, and so the woman I am writing about here, Lydia Gelinas, was probably New Hampshire’s first “Hello Girl” of WWI.
When America went to war, a primary need was to set up a communication’s network. They needed skilled telephone operators fluent in England and French (or German or Italian, etc. depending on their assignments). New England was one place where many of the women telephone operators were bilingual. Continue reading
