‘Telephone of Wind’ lets people grieving talk to loved ones who passed away through non-wired phones

MILLVALE, Pa. — A tug of a sage gate reveals a beautiful garden.

Step further into a courtyard in Millvale and you’ll find a phone booth tucked away in the corner.

A Telephone of the Wind, connected to…well, that’s up to you.

“It’s a phone for everyone whose lost a loved one,” Alisa Whysong.

She and her husband, Todd, helped bring the first Telephone of the Wind that they know of to Western Pa. in memory of their daughter, Katie, who they lost in 2021.

“Everyone grieves differently, whether they pray, whether they go to the site where their loved one is buried,” said Todd.

The Telephone of the Wind is another option now locally. It’s a national movement where non-wired phones are set up somewhere private for people to use to talk to someone who has passed away.

“The telephone is an outlet,” said Alisa. “It is a place for people to share those memories and say those goodbyes.”

The Whysongs commissioned artist Lisa Seel to transform the courtyard behind the Maple Leaf community gallery in Millvale into a Japanese garden to nestle the phone.

“Bringing the elements of water and earth and the sound of the wind chimes, trying to establish a place of peace,” said Seel.

The chimes came from Lisa’s basement, the phone booth that holds the phone was on a corner in Millvale before the flood of 2004. It was damaged but a woman who bought the property it was on kept it in her basement all these years.

The rotary phone that is in the phone booth now was donated.

“We were searching and searching and searching for a rotary phone because the act of dialing numbers seems to really help connect to the phone and to the ‘why’ you’re using the phone,” said Alisa.

“Some people dial their loved one’s former phone number, some people dial their birthday, some people dial some number that meant something between the two of them,” noted Todd.

Seel found comfort in the phone just last week after losing a dear friend.

“I came out here and had a nice conversation and it is very cathartic to just be able to say those things out loud,” said Seel.

Todd has used the phone; Alisa hasn’t yet, but she enjoys sitting on the bench in the garden surrounding it.

Their daughter, Katie’s, efforts to help people who felt marginalized and alone, are behind all of Todd and Alisa’s projects.

“To continue projects like this that represent how Katie lived, instead of focusing so much on how she left this world,” said Todd.

They lost Katie to suicide in 2021 and have been trying to break the stigma surrounding mental illness ever since.

Channel 11 reported on one of their first initiatives in 2022: the Positive Painting Project, a program where people paint pictures that are then screen-printed with six phrases pertaining to mental health. They’re hung in the community where they were painted or in the schools of the students who painted them.

The Telephone of the Wind is the Whysongs most recent initiative.

“To give somebody who might not have another way of grieving, or this way of grieving speaks to them, this resource,” said Alisa.

Seel added “Nobody else can hear you but hopefully the wind carries those messages to wherever those loved ones are.”

You can go to the Telephone of the Wind anytime of the day or night; they have a light for it. It’s right next to the police station behind a green fence in Millvale.

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