Raise a Glass to John Sumpter

Kelly Teal

It’s so easy to feel insulated from real life when I’m traveling to events like COMPTEL and NARUC. I’ve walked through so many hotel hallways this month that they all look the same. Food no longer is distinguishable by dish – it’s all the same starch, protein, vegetable or chocolate and red wine. Events and faces and names blur. I wonder when I’ll finish falling through the rabbit hole. And then bad news is passed on. And the sadness I feel is genuine, about the most genuine emotion one can experience in an insulated world that doesn’t shield us from death.

I’m talking about John Sumpter, whom I met at COMPTEL in the fall of 2005. John died of cancer in late January; his passing was announced this week at COMPTEL. He was a lawyer, for the longest time, for Pac-West Telecomm. Before that, he had worked for AT&T. But for me, he was the teddy bear masquerading as a grumpy old man who, when I was a baby telecom reporter, took the time to sketch the entire history of telecommunications on a series of 4x6 notepad pages. We hung out at the PHONE+/xchange booth for something like an hour that afternoon (and he was worried about taking up too much of my time! Are you kidding??). I still have those sketches in my office – crude pencil drawings of telegraph poles and the black rotary phones AT&T leased in the ‘60s, the cordless landline phone, the mobile phone. John gave me an education – and, subsequently, story ideas – that I will always appreciate.

And I know it’s not just me. John was very special to others in our industry.

John will be (unable-to-quantify) missed. His sense of humor, drier than a cracker, damn near made me double over. The kicker was that he combined a knowledgeable brain with a big heart. There are several people like John in my life and with John’s passing, I am reminded to tell them that I treasure them, just as I treasure the memory of the time John spent with me, for no benefit to him at all.