The volunteers manning the phones received strange requests every year.

Such as “two female dental technicians” calling in hopes of meeting “sailors with good teeth.”

Diane Blum, the phone bank’s coordinator, said she made the match. “We get invitations for anything and everything,” she told The Oregonian in 1988.

So it went back in the days when Portland’s Fleet Week included a local Dial-A-Sailor service, which launched in 1976.

During the resource’s heyday, the phone-bank volunteers received more than a thousand calls during Fleet Week. Many were from ex-servicemen and their families who wanted to be generous to visiting sailors by taking them to a nice restaurant, a ball game, a backyard barbecue or even church.

Portland Fleet Week in 1980. (The Oregonian)LC- Donald Wilson

But some of the callers had different objectives. Young women called every year looking for a date. Some of them were quite specific about what they were looking for, listing eye color, height and so on.

Onto the “Dial-A-Sailor Guest Request Form” the specifications would go -- 6’0″-6’2″, blue eyes, must love long walks and sunsets -- and the form would be tacked to a bulletin board along the waterfront.

One year, a woman called seeking a handful of sailors for -- and the volunteer who took the call insisted this was a direct quote -- “a good time.” The caller said she had a swimming pool and a Jacuzzi for the sailors to enjoy.

“We’re really not a dating service,” Blum said in that 1988 interview -- before being interrupted by fellow volunteer Ronda Wilson, who chirped: “Well, we do have one Dial-A-Sailor marriage pending. A Portland lady met a Canadian officer last year and they’re engaged.”

Actually, that wasn’t the only one. In 1986, a 24-year-old Portlander named Marilyn came upon a Dial-A-Sailor advertisement in the newspaper and blanched.

“I thought, ‘Oh, this sounds really sleazy,’” she said. “But then I thought again.” She called the number and asked for “a single officer between the age of 23 and 30, absolutely not married.”

She added: “It was like putting in an order for a hamburger. You tell them what you want at the little trailer where they take the orders.”

That trailer was parked in Waterfront Park near the Burnside Bridge. And it may not have looked like much, but it got the job done. Four hours after Marilyn placed her hamburger order, Lt. Steve Fulton of the USS Curts called her. Eight months later, they got married.

Volunteers Ray Jones, Yvonne Visteen and Diane Blum field telephone calls for Rose Festival's Dial-A-Sailor program. (The Oregonian)

Every year Blum tried to make clear to the public that Dial-A-Sailor wasn’t supposed to be for the lovelorn. “It’s almost like Adopt-A-Sailor-for-A-Day-Or-Two,” she said.

But the perception that it set up romantic dates and sexual liaisons continued, prompting a name change in 1989 to Host-A-Sailor. Blum even had explanatory pamphlets printed up.

“The ‘Host-A-Sailor’ program is often mistaken for a dating service,” it stated. “True, many women and men find mutual interests during Rose Festival time, but ‘Host-A-Sailor’ is much, much more.”

Alas, it was now also much, much less -- at least to some. Soon the service fell out of favor and eventually disappeared.

The legend of Dial-A-Sailor lived on, however. In 2009, a woman looking forward to Fleet Week posted a query to Yahoo! Answers.

“It’s about Rose Festival time here in Portland Oregon, and my girlfriends and I were looking to head to sun river for a couple nights with a few hunky sailors,” she wrote. “Anyone have any idea what the dial-a-sailor phone number is?”

The answer? She was offered the number to Portland’s U.S. Naval Recruiting Office.

-- Douglas Perry

@douglasmperry

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