Telegrapher Leo Thiel, 99

As the 1916 presidential-election returns came due, all eyes in the Montana railroad waiting room were on Leo Thiel. The young telegrapher sat proudly in his starched shirt at the telegraph key, his blond hair under a green eyeshade, his long fingers tapping out queries in Morse code.

"It's the story I liked best, and he was a man of many stories," said his daughter Helen Strickland of Seattle.

"He told me, `I was the John Chancellor of Ismay. People from all around would gather. This was long before TV.' They didn't have results for two days, but Woodrow Wilson defeated Charles Evans Hughes."

Mr. Thiel died Monday at age 99.

Born in Turner, Mich., Mr. Thiel worked hard as a boy but lightened his days with baseball. As a teen he played on an industrial team that included future Hall of Famer Kiki Cuyler. He once took his children to Wrigley Field to meet the baseball great.

Mr. Thiel later was a Seattle Mariner fan - no matter how they did.

Unable to get transportation to high school, young Mr. Thiel took his $50 summer-job earnings and paid a telegrapher to teach him the trade. Then he headed to Montana, where the Milwaukee Road was hiring at $75 a month.

He paid his fare and later joked, "I paid the railroad before they began paying me."

In 1918 Mr. Thiel married and joined the Army Signal Corps. After service at Fort Lewis, he worked as a ticket agent in Roundup, Mont., then came to Seattle for good in 1935. He worked in the relay office, eventually becoming director, and retired in 1965.

He kept his telegraph key and served as telegrapher at model-railroad shows. Mr. Thiel also relayed the message of Washington's statehood for a centennial re-enactment.

Mr. Thiel liked photography, writing and grew vegetables and fruit, and he baked pies to give away.

"This year we had to tell him he couldn't climb the fruit trees anymore," Strickland said. "He said he just wanted to just go to sleep because if he couldn't do something for someone each day, that day wasn't worth a thing."

Other survivors include his sister, Ella Thiel of Tawas City, Mich.; his daughters Phillis Cole of Mount Vernon, Barbara Taylor of Lake San Marcos, Calif., and Shirley Lange of Seattle; seven grandchildren; and nine great-grandchildren. His wife, Elizabeth Mary Thiel, died in 1973.

Services were scheduled for 1 p.m. Dec. 10 at Broadview Community United Church of Christ, 325 N. 125th St.

Remembrances may be sent to the Emergency Feeding Program of the Greater Seattle Council of Churches, to University Methodist Temple or to Broadview Community United Church of Christ.