In truth, the telegram long ago succumbed to long distance telephones, faxes, e-mail and instant messaging. Even deliverers who sang them couldn't save telegrams from the dustbin of history. The fact that one final telegram was sent last Friday is a tribute not to the telegram's endurance, but to the glacial tediousness of extinction itself.
Read this article and listen to NPR's All Things Considered's Western Union Sends Its Last Telegram