Reno Evening Gazette-Journal

Carson  City  Bureau

May 20, 1967

A7ZT is a Carson City radio station that never touches rock ‘n’ roll, broadcasts only a few hours a day and can be heard by only a handful of the folks who live in its home town.

But it has won a loyal, grateful "audience" that stretches all the way from the Mekong Delta to the lower East Side

 A7ZT, with its staff of one— Carson City Councilman George Criteser -- has become a link between the fighting men in Southeast Asia and their kinfolk back in the states.

Criteser is one of five ham radio operators in the U.S. taking part in what's called the "Vietnam to CONUS (Continental Army U.S.) phone patch service.”

Sometimes as often as seven days a week, the retired U.S. Bureau of Public Roads engineer huddles over the big short­wave radio in a tiny room at the rear of his 1875 mansion on North Nevada Street, picking shortwave radio messages from Vietnam out of the sky and sending them into the telephone lines for delivery to homes across the land.

 The homefront end of the conversation flows back into Criteser's radio for transmission to the calling party in Vietnam on his powerful shortwave.

He says the volunteer job (he once worked 11 hours straight, handling 57 calls) provides him "the most complete satisfaction I've ever known."

“I feel these fellows are doing their part while I'm sitting here safe and comfortable. I'd be a darn fool not to help them out.”

Voices from Vietnam were coming through loud and clear one morning last week as Criteser sat at his radio, taking down numbers from the Army radioman in Asia, then relaying them to the operator in Reno for dialing.

'COLLECT CALL'

In cases where the line was busy, the operator would break in and announce: "I have a collect call from Private-------- in South Vietnam.”

The reaction was usually one of surprise and disbelief, but the conversations that ensued ran the gamut of human feeling —sometimes warm and emotional, sometimes frosty and sometimes poignantly awkward.

A PFC from New York, for example, spent his allotted five minutes trying to break through the language barrier to his Greek-speaking parents.

About all he was able to get across was the simple message: "I am fine! I am fine!"

Hello, how are you doing?" a sergeant asked his wife in San Antonio, Tex

"Oh, I'm all right," she re-plied quietly.

 "What have you been doing lately?"

"Oh, I'm doing the same," she answered.

"I still love you very much; I miss you a lot," he assured her.

"The feeling is mutual, darling," she answered.

Another wife spent most of the conversation complaining about the fact that she hadn't received an insurance check, about

how the bills were piling up, and how the kids were making her a "nervous wreck."

"How are you doing?" a captain in Long Binh, Vietnam, asked his astonished wife in Florida.

"Oh, this is really something. I can't believe it!" she squealed.

"What are you doing next Thursday night?" he asked.

"I don't know. Why?"

"I'll tell you what. You'll be picking me up at the airport in Jacksonville."

THIS IS GREAT!

"Oh, yes," she hesitated, then blurted: "On Thursday? This Oh, this is great! I don't know what to say! I'm jumping up and down like a rabbit. I'm so excited! . . er, is this call free?"  

 Criteser broke in to assure her the only part she'd have to pay for was from Carson City to her house. Vietnam to Carson was on the house.

 "I want you to be very care­ful driving to the airport," the husband in Vietnam kept insisting.

"All right, all right. I'll be careful," she promised.

 One wife apologized for hanging up on her husband the last time and for the nasty letter she'd written afterward. She promised her next letter would be a "real nice one."

Another, in the Midwest, inquired whether the cookies she'd sent had arrived. 'Did you use them for hand grenades?" she asked.

 "The fudge and cookies had to be thrown out," her Army husband advised, "but everything else was OK. How are the A's (the Kansas City Athletics) getting along?"

"They climbed out of the cel­lar, but they lost 8-0 last night."

"That sounds par for the course. Well, see you in a couple of months."

 A father in Chicago reported he was "broke and just sittin' around home. I don't go nowhere. Why don't you send your old dad 50 bucks? I sure could use the money."

When informed he was paying for the call, he brought it to a speedy conclusion.

 Another boy told his father he was calling from the hospital but would be released soon and sent back to the DMZ, where some of the war's bloodiest fighting is going on.

"You know son, I think we have a lot to talk about when you get back — a lot to get straightened out. PLEASE call again."

 And so it went.  It was the middle of the night in Vietnam, it was late morning in Carson City, and the calls were still coming through.

NO  SALARY

Criteser, who's been a HAM since the crystal set days of 1919. receives no salary from the federal government for his work but has received thousands of dollars worth of equipment.

He's also received priceless letters of gratitude from wives and mothers throughout the nation, thanking him for the few precious minutes they were able to spend with their loved ones.

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