The Starlite Club & The Telephone Pioneers

While the Rocket Club was arguably the best known nightclub on the Jacksboro Highway, there were plenty of others. One was the Starlite Club. Located on the west side of the highway and several blocks south of the Rocket Club, my knowledge of it is due to exactly one thing. Stashed in some of the photos and documents that my parents saved is a photo folder that is virtually identical to the ones used by the Rocket Club. It only differed in color, cover design and the club name on the front. The folder serves to perpetuate the memory (good or bad) of the Starlite Club, but it’s what I found inside that’s interesting.

My mother, Ruby Claudine Wacaster Marmo, started working for the telephone company in 1922 when she was sixteen years old, having just moved to Memphis, Tennessee. Remember, this was when the phone company was AT&T with no competition.


At any rate, my mother spent 31 years with the phone company before retiring and spending another 33 years on various PBX boards with hospitals, newspapers and department stores. When she retired from AT&T, she was a Life Member of the Telephone Pioneers of America. But, as I’m sure you know, to become a Life Member of anything, first you have to be just a member. I never knew when that occurred...until I found the Starlite Club folder.



Inside was a certificate printed on heavyweight stock Certifying that Ruby C. Marmo was a Member of the Telephone Pioneers of America. The date is December 25, 1949. This much is fact. From this point on, it’s an educated guess, but I think I’m correct. If anyone has information to the contrary, I’d appreciate hearing from them.

Since my parents appeared in a photo taken at the Rocket Club sometime in 1949, and the Telephone Pioneers certificate was found in a Starlite Club folder where it’s been since 1949, it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to reach a particular conclusion.

What I believe is that the presentation of the certificate was held at a party in the Starlite Club, sometime in late December, 1949. Could it have been a few months later, making it early 1950? Sure could, since I can’t nail the date down to the specific day,

This is just a microcosm of the kinds of things that went on during the late 1940s here in Ft. Worth. No earthshattering event was connected with this presentation nor did it make the newspaper. It was just another moment in the day-to-day life in Cowtown.