Wacky Jack’s Singing Telegrams
New business offers variety of characters, packages to satisfy all
By Fred Pace
One of Keith Berneburg’s first jobs was with Eastern Onion Signing Telegrams in Pittsburgh. He dressed in various costumes and delivered the humorous telegrams in a musical form.
“I had a blast,” he said. “It was a fun job.”
When Berneburg and his wife, Rhonda, relocated to Beckley they began thinking about starting their own singing telegram business.
“There was nothing like this in Beckley,” Keith Berneburg said. “We did some research and surveying and due to the tremendous amount of requests for this type of entertainment, we decide to start Wacky Jack’s Singing Telegrams.”
Rhonda Berneburg says her husband has always been an entertainer.
“I thought it was a wonderful idea,” she said. “Telegrams have been around for a while, but you don’t see them around as much these days.”
Singing telegrams are historically linked to normal telegrams, but tend to be humorous. Sometimes the artist is in costume or formal clothing. Singing telegrams are often given as a gift.
Western Union, the American telegraph company, began offering singing telegram services in 1933. On July 28, 1933, a fan sent Hollywood singing star Rudy Vallee a birthday greeting by telegram.
According to Wikipedia.com, the Western Union public relations director at the time decided this would be a good opportunity to make telegrams, which had been associated with deaths and other tragic news, into something more popular. He asked a Western Union operator, Lucille Lipps, to sing the message over the telephone, and this became the first singing telegram.
Western Union suspended its singing telegram service in 1974, but independent singing telegram companies, like Wacky Jack’s, specializing in often costumed personal delivery of gift messages, have kept up the tradition.
“The memory of an event like this will never die,” Keith said. “And it’s just as fun to send one as it is to get one.”

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