Co-op News
Co-op, Museum Honor Electrification
Editor’s Note: This is one in a series of articles ECT.coop will publish as the nation’s electric co-ops mark the 75th anniversary of the REA program.
For those too young to remember what life was like without electricity, there’s a museum in Virginia that brings that stark reality to the present day. And it does so with the help of the local co-op.
Visitors to the REA Room in the Nelson County Museum of History learn about the work it took to bring electricity to the rural Virginia county. (Photo By: Greg Kelly)
Lovingston-based Central Virginia Electric Cooperative and the Nelson County Museum of History have enjoyed a close working relationship since the museum opened in 2007 to coincide with the 70th anniversary of the co-op’s founding. The co-op helped secure funding for the museum and supports its work with local schoolchildren, who learn about electrification as part of their curriculum.
“Before co-op lines were strung, people pretty much lived as they had for more than 100 years,” said Gary Wood, Central Virginia Electric president and CEO. Farm work was done by hand, as were most chores around the house, he said.
Heywood “Woody” Greenberg, the museum’s vice president, noted that electrification was also important to economic development. “No businesses would contemplate moving to Nelson County unless they had access to electricity,” Greenberg said.
Visitors to the museum’s Rural Electrification Administration room learn about life in Nelson County before electricity and how the REA worked to bring power to the county, said Greg Kelly, director of member services and business development at Central Virginia Electric Cooperative. They also learn about the building of the system and how new members had to be educated when the lights came on in the late 1930s.
At the Sept. 20, 1937, meeting that led to the co-op’s formation, some 400 people showed up with their $5 in hand, Kelly said. The newly formed co-op borrowed $100,000 from the federal government to string the first 129 miles of electric lines. When electricity finally came, the first appliances people rushed to buy were irons and radios, Kelly said.
As 2011 dawns, and many Americans take electricity for granted, Kelly recalled how in the days before the co-op’s creation, the only Nelson County residents to have power lived near the water mill — and the power stayed on only until the mill’s owner was ready for bed.
“He would go to the mill,” Kelly said. “He’d then honk his car horn to let people know he was shutting the mill down and their lights were about to go out.”