By ADAM STEWART

Staff writer

Gene Winkler, owner of G&J Video, 426 E. Main St., Marion, will stop selling Verizon Wireless cellular phones Saturday.

Corporatization and what Winkler calls a lack of consideration for local dealers on the company’s part prompted the decision.

Several customers said Tuesday that they would miss having a local cell phone store and the service it provides.

“One thing about Gene, he was always helpful,” customer Dorothy Conyers said. “You can’t go out of town and get that kind of help.”

Winkler has sold cellular phones in Marion since 1982, when he became a dealer for Kansas Cellular, which he said was the best of the three companies for which he has sold phones.

“They took care of their dealers,” he said.

Alltel bought Kansas Cellular and later Verizon Wireless bought Alltel. With each merger, concern for local dealers and customers declined, Winkler said. Verizon Wireless aggressively discounts and in some cases gives away phones, taking away business from local dealers, he said.

Winkler said he would rather get out of the office and accomplish things than wait for customers that never came.

Service areas for cell phones have changed dramatically in the intervening years, he said.

When Winkler first became a dealer for Kansas Cellular, the nearest tower was near Canton. To get a strong enough signal to activate customers’ phones, he would go to Marion High School Warrior Stadium and walk to the top of the bleachers.

Companies focused on improving service along highways at first, gradually expanding their networks to the point that not having cell phone service is unexpected.

He has witnessed a nearly complete transformation in cell phone technology, as well. The phones he began selling in 1982 would be practically unrecognizable to current teen-agers.

“They had the bag phones, you know,” Winkler said. “Back then you were the elite if you had a cell phone.”

Not having a cell phone is odd now, he added.

Over time, he saw cell phones evolve into bulky “bricks” with big antennae, flip phones, and now smart phones.

“I wish I would have kept all those phones over the years,” he said.

Modern smart phones are practically tiny computers, providing Internet access, e-mail, global positioning systems, and a variety of programs.

“You can do probably anything on a smart phone that you can do on a computer,” Winkler said.

One program he recently heard about that demonstrates what modern phones are capable of doing is a bar code reader. A person can take a picture of a bar code with their phone’s integrated camera — another phone innovation — and the program can tell what the item is, where it is for sale, where the best price is, and directions to the store.

“I can’t imagine, as far as it’s come in the last five years, what more they can do with cell phones,” he said.