MEDFORD, Or., April 5.--(Special.)--With the appointive power of the Mayor in their hands the City Council went through the formality of naming his honor's assistants tonight with a celerity and harmony which has not been seen in municipal affairs since the fight against Mayor Eifert started at his election last January.
    R. B. McCabe was appointed City Attorney, J. F. Hittson, chief of police; E. J. Runyard, city market master, and O. Arnspiger, city engineer. With the exception of the first-named all the appointees were held over from the former administration of Mayor Canon.
Sunday Oregonian, Portland, April 6, 1913, page 6

    MEDFORD, Or., Sept. 2.--(Special.)--William Eifert, aged 52, mayor of this city, was found dead in the rear of his tailor shop about 9 o'clock tonight. It is supposed his death was caused by heart trouble.
    Mr. Eifert came to Medford about ten years ago from Akron, O. He was a past exalted ruler of the Elks. He leaves a widow, one son, a Southern Pacific fireman, and five daughters.
Morning Oregonian, Portland, September 3, 1913, page 1

    Many are the tales a telephone operator of the early days could tell--if she would talk.
    She worked before the word "automation" was coined. She worked in an era when the "wonderful invention" needed a warm heart and sympathetic ear as well as human hands to keep it operating in the manner to which patrons so quickly became accustomed.
    With these statements, Mrs. H. R. Burk of 111 King St., Medford, agrees. She is the former Edna Eifert, one of Medford's earliest telephone operators--one of the first voices to respond to "Hello Central."
    When the exchange was new and communications poor, she often had to repeat the conversation for both participants.
Had To Be Trusted
    "Central," as she was called--and she was frequently called--just had to be trusted, and she could be. The "hello" girl's lips were sealed then--and Edna's are today. "VIP" and "top secret" were not in her vocabulary, but observance of the Golden Rule was in her character.
    Considering the exodus of families into this valley from the East when Mrs. Burk was with the telephone company, it is no wild supposition to believe that there were many long distance calls put through the Medford exchange.
    There were many romances in the making and in the breaking. Many big financial deals were being "firmed up" in Medford's "Boom Days." Mrs. Burk could probably write a book with a different angle on Southern Oregon history, just by quoting those conversations, but anyone who thinks she is about to betray that trust is just a dreamer.
Will Not Be Told
    The persons involved may be "no longer of this world," but their conversations on the Bell telephone will not be told.
    There were several telephone companies in early Medford, present files of Pacific Northwest Bell reveal.
    There was the old Sunset Company, probably the first; the Pacific States Company and the Home Telephone and Telegraph Company. It was for Pacific that Edna worked.
    There were two telephone directories during one period of the early 1900s with telephone exchanges in Medford and Ashland. The fire department and the police department had numbers with each. If the person reporting a fire or trying to call police failed to get a response from the number in Directory No. 1, the patron was advised to "call Central" and ask for the Directory No. 2, number.
In Drug Store
    When Edna became operator, the switchboard was in the back of Strang's drug store on Main Street. It was Charles Strang, father of Fred Strang of Medford, who got the exchange established here. It failed to serve more than 15 or 16 patrons until he granted free tolls to Jacksonville, then the county scat.
    The exchange remained in the drug store until 1908, when it was moved to North Central Ave., the present location of the Western Thrift store.
    "Hello, Edna," was the common greeting in those days.
    The joys, the sorrows of many families were reported to Central. Narrow escapes from disaster and death were sometimes made possible by the telephone girl.
Recalls Hearing Voice
    Edna recalls a voice whispering, "I'm so sick." She immediately knew from whom the call had come and summoned the woman's husband. He arrived at his home in time to bring her out of a heart attack. He later told the operator he asked his wife why she hadn't called him and she replied, "I knew Edna would find you."
    In town, all calls came through "Central." Knowing this, the reporter asked Edna a number of questions regarding Medford events and people. Her repeated answer was, "I can't tell you about that."
    Her husband, a former Salem resident who came to Medford as building superintendent for construction of the Jackson County courthouse annex, thinks it is quite a coincidence that his first wife was also a telephone operator in the early life of a communication system. She was Nancy Crabtree, first switchboard operator in Cambridge, Iowa.
    Some families go through life floating along on the edge of the stream or just treading water in the quiet pools. Others seem destined to swim in the main current all the way. As a result their names become linked with history--of a business, of a town or a nation--dependent upon the area of their endeavors. They are participants in events that will be remembered; associates of persons, successful and unsuccessful, but known. The Eifert family was one of these.
    When Edna was a young girl in Ohio her father was a Democrat. There are still Democrats in Ohio and there's nothing so memorable about that. But since he was a Democrat when the famous Commoner, William Jennings Bryan, was running for president, and his daughter Edna was invited to sing on the same platform with the "silver-tongued orator," it is remembered.
    A tour to Niagara Falls in 1901 with the chorus from her college was not a momentous occasion, in itself. But when the chorus arrived to hear that the President of the United States had been shot by an anarchist just 1½ hours earlier in nearby Buffalo, that, too, was not to be forgotten.
    President McKinley, a native of Ohio, died a week after the shooting to go down in history as another "assassinated President."
    Mrs. Burk was a student at Ohio Northern University at Ada on that September day in 1901.
    The university must have been, even at the turn of the century, a school which offered a wide program. For, although Mrs. Burk was a music major, she was prepared in the commercial field, too.
    Coming to Medford, she operated the telephone company's switchboard. She later supervised the telephone operators, was bookkeeper for Warner, Wortman and Gore, one of the city's largest groceries; cashier and bookkeeper for Hutchison and Lumsden general mercantile store, operator of the U.S. post office substation on Bartlett Street and secretary to the carpenter's local union.
Ready To Repeat
    Knowing people in all sections of Jackson County, she was rated as the cub reporter's best friend. She was always ready to report visitors from the Applegate, Brownsboro, Ashland, Gold Hill and Prospect when "towning" was regarded as news in the Local and Personal column.
    The Eifert family, W. W. Eifert, who became mayor of Medford, Mrs. Eifert, their five daughters and one son, came to Medford at the insistence of Charley and Callie Palm, who had arrived earlier. Mrs. Palm was Mr. Eifert's sister. Their stories of the Southern Oregon country led the Eiferts to hire a coach on the Southern Pacific and start west.
    Medford was about the size of Ada, but Ada was old and Medford was new and Ada was a college town. The Eiferts soon found, however, that there was a migration into Jackson County of "people interested in the better things of life." Their daughters had been given the "advantages," training in elocution and music. Edna soon moved into the productions of the Andrews Opera Company, church choirs and lodge functions. She, also, sang at funerals.
Refuses To Sing
    "People who think there is race prejudice here now should have been here then," she commented last week. "There was one Negro family in town. The man's wife died. The regular soloist for the undertaking parlor refused to sing at a Negro funeral."
    The late John Perl, whose funeral home was then on Bartlett St., came to Edna. "Of course, I'll sing," she remembers telling Perl. Later the grateful Negro came to pay her. She refused to take the money but at Christmas was recipient of a "beautiful gift" from him.
    The first movie theater Edna remembers in Medford was the old Savoy, at which she sang. It was located on North Front St. The words of songs were flashed on the screen. She also sang at the Page Theater on East Main at Bear creek. It was gutted by fire in the 1920s.
Glamorous Moment
    One of her most "glamorous moments," however, was singing the role of the Queen in "Iolanthe," which was presented at the fairgrounds by the Andrews Opera Company under auspices of the Greater Medford Club.
    Her costume was shipped from San Francisco for the production. The opposite in costuming was experienced when she consented to fill in as Katisha in "The Mikado." The singer to be imported for the role failed to appear. Edna had been playing one of the Three Little Maids in an attractive makeup. She still remembers the comments of the late James Stevens, who got her ready for the part.
    Another treasured recollection of her singing career takes her back to World War I. She was a member of a chorus invited to sing with Madame Schumann-Heink when the famous opera star came to Ashland to raise funds for the American Red Cross. Madame Schumann-Heink, who had sons in the American army, the German army and the German navy, sang in camps and for Red Cross chapters throughout the United States.
    Entertainment was through participation in the early 1900s.
Recalls Serenades
    Edna recalls the many occasions upon which her sister, Jessie, now Mrs. E. N. Eldridge of Medford; Jessie's former husband, Bill Barnum, and Leon Hanna, brother of former Circuit Judge H. K. Hanna of Jacksonville, used to serenade her and her friends. The Barnums, who owned and operated the Rogue River Valley railroad, had a "Briscoe" car, which was the pride of father W. S. Barnum. His son and daughter-in-law used it as conveyance for their serenading tours with accordion and saxophone.
    For (she can't remember how many) years Edna sang in the Presbyterian church choir, which she also directed. Her mezzo-soprano voice is remembered by many persons who were in the congregation when she, standing on the balcony, led the singing of "God Bless America" during World War II.
    As grand warder of the Order of Eastern Star, she attended the Grand Chapter meeting in Portland in 1926 and sang "Open the Gates of the Temple." She is past worthy matron of Reames chapter in Medford.
    A reference to the Eifert family recently appeared in the Mail Tribune "Flight of Time" column. Dated Sept. 5, 1913, it read: "Funeral services for Mayor W. W. Eifert, largest in city's history."

Medford Mail Tribune, October 6, 1963, page 6