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April 7, 2026 at 12:57 pm
JACKSONVILLE, Ore. – The long-awaited “wind phone” is now officially installed at the Jacksonville Cemetery. This concludes a nearly two-year effort by local resident John Howell. Surrounded by his family, friends, and the volunteers who helped construct the memorial, the 82-year-old unveiled the vintage, disconnected telephone inside a custom wooden enclosure beneath a sprawling madrone tree. The project provides a quiet, dedicated space for the grieving. “People can get things off their chest that they’ve been feeling, maybe, that they didn’t get to say to their loved one before they passed. That’s really the idea,” Howell says.
John Howell and his daughter (left center) along with friends and volunteers after the enclosure and phone were installed this morning.
Howell, a retired contractor, initially spent about a year trying to secure an abandoned phone booth near the local post office before realizing the cemetery offered a much better space for quiet reflection. Working alongside the cemetery committee, the Independent Order of Odd Fellows, and local volunteers like Sexton Rick Shields, Howell navigated the approval process to bring the region’s only wind phone between Eugene and Burney Falls to life. When he first began researching the project three years ago, there were 144 wind phones worldwide, and today that number has grown to nearly 600.
John Howell (left) and Jacksonville Cemetery Sexton Rick Shields
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A disconnected vintage crank telephone awaits visitors to the cemetery.
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“I hope it brings peace to anybody that uses it.” – John Howell
For Howell, whose wife is currently in memory care for Alzheimer’s, the project is deeply personal. He said that the first person he plans to speak to on the newly installed line is his late sister. He just had a friend in Jacksonville of 50 years who had passed last week that he hopes to say a few words to. As visitors pick up the speaker handle on the old vintage crank phone to find closure, Howell is already looking toward his next volunteer project. He plans on adapting a life-story memory project he previously implemented at Pioneer Village to help residents in his wife’s memory care facility preserve their personal histories.
The wind phone is located in the eastern section of the Jacksonville Cemetary. The 32 acre property is open 7 days a week, 8 a.m. to a half hour after dusk.
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