West Florida Electric Cooperative Association, Inc.

Still kicking at 65

WFEC founding member A. D. Simpson’s January 1940 electric bill is for the amount of $2.41

Milestones mark the progress of a cooperative effort

West Florida Electric Cooperative recently celebrated its 65th year of service to its member-owners. In honor of the Co-op’s rich and varied past, Current Light Flashes is featuring 65 randomly-selected historical highlights in this month’s issue and several to come. The following information is gleaned from a combination of sources, including past and present WFEC members, employees and trustees, publications and newspaper clippings and is not ranked according to

importance or chronological order. Whether you share these memories or most of them happened "before your time," we at WFEC hope you’ll be entertained, informed and inspired as you read about some of the events that have bound our cooperative — and our community — together.

1. FDR signs the Rural Electrification Act

May 21, 1936

While rural residents of Calhoun, Holmes, Jackson and Washington Counties must continue to rely on kerosene lamps, washboards and wood stoves, the existing, investor-owned power companies deem the sparsely-populated countryside too unprofitable to serve. By executive order, President Frankilin D. Roosevelt authorizes the federal Rural Electrification Administration to make loans, with preference to nonprofit or limited dividend agencies such as cooperatives, for providing electricity to rural residents. Soon area residents begin meeting, organizing, petitioning and collecting signatures to form West Florida Electric Cooperative.

2. Co-op conducts its first by-mail elections

Nov. 1, 2000

WFEC members’ decision, one year earlier, to begin electing trustees by mail ballot, instead of in person, increases member participation in WFEC’s elections 500 percent. Between mid-October and Nov. 1, the deadline for ballot mail-ins, nearly 6,000 of WFEC’s approximately 20,000 members, a record number, send in ballots to the certified public accounting firm that will perform an impartial count. The revised voting procedures ensure shut-ins and others who can’t attend WFEC’s annual meeting have an opportunity, for the first time, to take part in their co-op’s democratic process.

3. WFEC’s new Sneads District office opens

Dec. 5, 1988

The Co-op’s new office and warehouse in Sneads at the former site of the Chattahoochee Motor Company on Hwy. 90 are about one mile east of the previous facility. The Town of Sneads buys the old office, constructed in 1966 to U. S. Dept. of Agriculture Rural Electrification Administration specifications.

4. Japan attacks Pearl Harbor

Dec. 7, 1941

The U. S. enters World War II. WFEC’s growth slows as electrical equipment becomes scarce, and almost all able-bodied men are drafted to fight; only two men remain to work on the lines.

5. WFEC’s service area is divided into districts

1952

WFEC’s members vote to establish nine districts using streams and roads as boundaries. Each district will be represented on the Co-op’s board by a trustee who resides in that district and is elected by the membership at large.

6. Hurricane Eloise ravages the Panhandle

September 23, 1975

After the storm, with 135 to 150 mile per hour winds, comes ashore in Walton County, some WFEC members are without power for seven days.

7. WFEC introduces local Internet service

August 1997

Previously, a lack of local service providers has forced many area residents to pay 20 cents or more each time they connect to the Internet. By January 2003, WFEC serves over 5,100 subscribers with five local access numbers and offers high-speed Internet service via two-way satellite, as well.

8. WFEC hires its first engineer

1939

E. P. McClain, of Mountrie, Ga., is the man for the job.
Among WFEC’s office staff in 1973, Mae Shouppe, fourth from right, is the only member of the group still working at WFEC today.

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