There was no dancing around these Maypoles, but there was
plenty of celebrating, as a high-flying group of young men last month became
the first graduates of a new school created with the help of Virginia�s
electric cooperatives.
Long ago, in the analog age, high school students took
civics, most knew their way around a slide rule, and every May 1st many
would celebrate the greening earth by dancing around a Maypole.
This quaint tradition dates back several centuries and is
now largely obsolete, yet may well have gotten a new lease on life recently,
as young people on May 12 celebrated around a different kind of �Maypole,�
this one a 40-foot utility pole on which they had trained tenaciously since
late winter.
Through a mix of hitting the books inside the classroom
and climbing the training poles outside, 11 young men spent 11 intense weeks
learning the basics of electric-utility line work �literally from the ground
up.
The most wondrous and wonderful part of this story may
not even be the fact that this new Power Line Worker Training School is the
first of its kind in Virginia, but that it went from rough vision to vivid
reality in a mere 11 months �from an inaugural meeting of the minds in April
2015 between representatives of Virginia�s electric cooperatives and
Southside Virginia Community College (SVCC) � to the beginning of classes on
March 1. (See cover story, page 12.)
From the outset, the program seemed to ride on a wave of
good fortune, fortitude, faith and financing.
The good fortune was due at least in part to the fact
that creating such a school was simply a great idea, with the closest
comparable one hundreds of miles away in north Georgia.
The program�s staff provided the fortitude, and kept the
faith. This dedicated group of professionals at SVCC worked tirelessly over
many months to meet the countless deadlines involved in building a
complicated training program virtually from scratch.
Two state grants helped provide financing. One came from
the state�s community college system, the other from the governor�s office,
both given to help this program allow young people to gain valuable skills �
and apply them in jobs � close to home.
Electric cooperatives across Virginia provided a generous
measure of all four ingredients, in the process creating a winning recipe
that joins public and private sectors in common cause to meet a shared need
for workforce training and community development. Virginia�s electric co-ops
stepped up and provided financial and material support to a school that will
produce skilled applicants for line-worker jobs for years to come.
And two cooperatives that together serve much of
Southside Virginia have been especially involved in the school from the
get-go. Mecklenburg Electric in Chase City and Southside Electric in Crewe
were key players in envisioning and planning the school, whose journey from
idea to reality is a living testament to one of the core principles of every
cooperative business: a commitment to the communities it serves.
Southside and Mecklenburg provided technical expertise
and invested sweat equity to make certain that the outside area � �the
playground� as it�s called by the students � was set up to fully train and
test these budding professionals in work that is important, satisfying � and
dangerous.
Training for danger, though, seems to be part of the DNA
of Pickett Park, an industrial complex outside Blackstone that houses the
school. The park occupies part of the bootprint of old Fort Pickett, a
former U.S. Army base. Developed in 1941 as World War II drew closer to
America�s shores, Fort Pickett was where many thousands of young soldiers
were trained before heading off to defeat the greatest threat the world has
ever seen, in the process becoming known as The Greatest Generation.
Last month, 11 members of the
Millennial Generation celebrated the completion of their own �basic
training,� in this case the rigors of electric- utility line work. On
graduation day, their words reflected an understanding that � just like
soldiers � the real test of their training is yet to come, in the daily
double duty of watching out for your own safety, and for that of your
crewmates.
But on that May day, past rigors and future challenges
were put aside for a few moments. In the field of poles on which they had
been trained and tested, their spirited shouts and jubilant cries were an
untethered exultation, an expression of pure joy, an exclamation marking the
end of their difficult first test of mind and body.
And marking the beginning of their climb toward a
promising career.
