First Electric Cooperative lights up 75 years of service

JACKSONVILLE — When the Rural Electrification Administration began offering electrical service in 1938 in Arkansas, only 105 homes were lighted. It soon became a status symbol to have an electric home.

REA is now known as First Electric Cooperative. Today it serves 88,000 members, and 75 years after the cooperative set its first pole in October 1937 on the Vestal place near Jacksonville, the co-op still calls the central-arkansas city home.

As part of its celebration of 75 years of service, the cooperative put out a call for memories from its members.

Della Fraser of Jacksonville responded with her story. She was born in rural Lonoke County in 1923, and she was in high school when the lights came on, she remembered. As the youngest of five children and the only one left at home, times were hard.

“When REA came to our neighborhood, we could not afford it, but my brother worked for them at that time, so he made it possible for us to get the lights,” Fraser wrote in a letter to First Electric Cooperative in December. “I think he even paid the bill. By the way, he retired from First Electric. … Now, due to electricity and technology, we have so much at our fingertips that makes our life so easy. Our parents could never imagine how easy life is compared to the way they lived.”

Delores Benton of Benton was born just one year before “the lights came on” in 1938.

“My family’s lights were turned on in the early ’40s,” she wrote in a recent letter to First Electric Cooperative. “I remember that one bulb hanging from the living room ceiling with a chain to pull that turned the light on and off. My Dad would lift me up so I could reach the chain. It was like magic! Eventually we had electric lights throughout the house and no longer needed the kerosene lamps and candles, except in emergencies like when the power went off during a storm. … Through the years came more delightful surprises: deep freezes; clothes dryers; televisions, even color televisions; air conditioning, first in a lot of public buildings, theaters, churches and then at last homes. Progress moved so fast that by the time I was grown and married, these luxuries were commonplace and taken for granted by the generation that followed.

“My father taught us to always turn the light off when we left a room, a lesson which I learned well and have practiced, much to the dismay of my family, but I am sure now that my children are grown with families of their own, they appreciate that lesson well-learned. Of course, now there are a lot more things to turn off than the light, and the list is still growing.”

First Electric officials believe that teaching young people the importance of energy efficiency and electrical safety is important. Children of cooperative members are eligible for scholarships and may compete with an essay or video on how to make a home energy-efficient to win a trip to Washington, D.C.

When Tori Moss was 17, she was chosen to participate in the First Electric Cooperative Youth Tour. She never realized that 10 years later, she would be working as the cooperative’s communications coordinator and planning to make the annual trip to Washington, D.C., as a chaperone to the three high school juniors chosen to visit the nation’s capital for a week in June.

Taking students to D.C. is only one of the ways the nonprofit electric cooperative gives back, and this year, it’s celebrating 75 years of service to its members in 17 counties.

“We are a cool business model,” Moss said about the first electric cooperative in Arkansas. “We don’t exist to make money. We operate for our members.”

Through the cooperative’s Operation Round-up, the 88,000 members of the electric cooperative can choose to round up their bill to the next dollar amount, and that money is put into the Operation Round-up Trust fund that is overseen by a nine-member board of trustees chosen by the cooperative’s board of directors, which is composed of cooperative members.

Each quarter, 100 percent of the money collected is donated for scholarships and to nonprofit organizations in the cooperative’s service areas.

“Since its inception in 1998, Operation Round-up has given more than a half a million dollars,” said Tonya Everhart, vice president of marketing and communications at First Electric.

Another service the cooperative offers its members is to enter the Electric Cooperatives of Arkansas $50,000 Energy Efficiency Makeover Contest. One winner is chosen each year from the 17 counties.

William and Nancy Ferrell of Hopewell were named winners of the 2011 makeover contest.

The couple’s 31-year-old home received much-needed energy-saving work, including sealing the building, insulating sidewalls, installing an energy-efficient water heater and geothermal heating and cooling system, and putting in high-efficiency windows and doors.

The home had very little insulation and inefficient windows and was heated and cooled by an older, mismatched inefficient system, officials said.

More than 2,000 applications were submitted for the contest. Besides the grand-prize winner, 16 runners-up received free 40-gallon high-energy-efficient water heaters.

Jerry Driskill, First Electric’s safety and loss-control supervisor, began his career 20 years ago and has worked his way up through the ranks. Driskill travels to schools, fire departments and civic organizations teaching people about the safety of electricity and the importance of keeping rights of way clear by trimming tree limbs.

“I have a safety trailer that explains the electrical system and how it works,” he said. “I also explain how a tree in your yard can affect 300 people’s power.”

First Electric Cooperative’s offices are in Jacksonville, Benton, Heber Springs, Perryville and Stuttgart.

To learn more about the cooperatives Youth Tour, visit www.youthtour.coop. To learn more about the cooperatives Operation Round-up and to register for the home makeover, visit www.firstelectric.coop.

Staff writer Jeanni Brosius can be reached at (501) 244-4307 or jbrosius@arkansasonline. com.