Adding our 85th ring

When my wife and I got mar­ried, we built a house on fam­i­ly land in Smyr­na. We were young and I grew up know­ing the val­ue of hard work, so nat­u­ral­ly, we set out doing a lot of things our­selves.

This work includ­ed reclaim­ing parts of the land by cut­ting down some trees. After the saw does its work, it’s always inter­est­ing to take a look at the stump left behind. I like to see the exposed rings, sig­ni­fy­ing years of growth rep­re­sent­ed in the wood, and to think about how just a small stump can be decep­tive­ly hard to unearth.

Your co-op turns 85 years old this year. Like a state­ly tree, we are root­ed deep in our com­mu­ni­ty and have years of rings that have weath­ered many storms. Our annu­al meet­ing is themed “Root­ed in Ser­vice. Pow­ered by Com­mu­ni­ty,” sym­bol­iz­ing our goal of serv­ing you all with strength and sta­bil­i­ty.

Togeth­er with the sub­stan­tial trees that were milled into poles to hold elec­tric lines, the 583 men that began your co-op inten­tion­al­ly plant­ed a seed that would grow into a cor­ner­stone of our com­mu­ni­ty, a seed that would grow with promis­es of a bet­ter life. Now elec­tric­i­ty is a nec­es­sary part of each day. Pow­er­ing your life both at the light switch and by invest­ing in our shared com­mu­ni­ty is what makes you more than a cus­tomer and us more than a util­i­ty.

Like a tree, we are stead­fast. Like a tree, we are resilient. Like a tree, we are root­ed in the soil we all share. We are blessed to be able to observe the many years of rings that hon­or your co-op’s lega­cy of ded­i­ca­tion to an improved qual­i­ty of life and cel­e­bra­tion of the strength exhib­it­ed when like-mind­ed peo­ple work togeth­er for the com­mon good. As our roots con­tin­ue to grow stronger, branch­es grow taller and rings are added to our co-op, you can count on our locals to look out for you and your lev­el of ser­vice to blos­som each year.