LOYAL. LOCAL. COMPLETE.
PARIS—In July of 1939, Edgar Electric Cooperative energized its first power line. The new company was established by the Edgar County Farm Bureau as part of FDR’s New Deal and The Rural Electrification Act (REA).
For the individuals and families living in rural Edgar County, the new REA act provided much-needed support, ensuring they could form their own companies and light the future of the place they called home.
Under the guidance of A. E. Staley, then the president of the Farm Bureau, a meeting at the old Paris High School auditorium on Feb. 9, 1938. Despite the frigid temperatures, approximately 250 people gathered to discuss changing times and changing needs.
Ernest Guyman, of Elbridge, proposed the group organize an electric cooperative and B. M. Huffman, of Hunter, seconded this proposal. A unanimous vote supported the decision.
Now, 85 years and a name change later, Enerstar Electric’s goal is still the same; to serve local communities.
“We’re not the product. We are not a big corporation that is responsible to shareholders. We are responsible to our membership and that’s the key to what makes us different,” Angela Griffin, Enerstar’s Manager of Marketing and Communications told a Prairie Press reporter on Thursday, Sept. 19, during a celebratory open house event.
The event, held at Enerstar headquarters in Paris, celebrated the many decades of service the energy company has ‘powered’ through. Heavy hors d’oeuvres, desserts, memorabilia, photos, building tours and the accompaniment of Stagecoach Coffee attributed to the success of the three-hour event, where both past and present employees reminisced and celebrated.
Vintage tools, equipment and safety gear provided by former Enerstar lineman Mike Clark displayed the numerous changes and provided perspective on how much has changed in the past 85 years.
When Griffin began her career at Enerstar in 1989, she worked alongside individuals who had begun their careers in the 1940s.
She said those coworkers experienced a significant amount of change over the span of their working lives and she too has witnessed energy and electricity shifts in more recent years.
“You have all kinds of new technology happening. There is solar and there are batteries and it is just a different world again and again,” she explained. “We are trying to stay, to focus on our membership and keep enhancing our membership. The people we serve are the people who work here and make the decisions for us as a company.”
Since the beginning, the company has been a not-for-profit organization guided by a board of directors. The nine directors are elected by the members of the electric company’s co-op.
Griffin said the co-op and its members are dedicated to seven “Cooperative Principles.” The principles include; open and voluntary membership, democratic member control, members’ economic participation, autonomy and independence, education, training and information, cooperation among cooperatives and concern for the community.
All cooperatives work for the greater good of the local communities they serve and focus on giving back to their communities, to help them thrive and grow. This focus on serving locals is one of the reasons Griffin believes Enerstar has remained relevant and will continue to stay that way.
“The co-op’s sole purpose is to serve our members. Not every other company is going to go out and serve rural addresses… We may have miles and miles between accounts…but we will continue to care for each of them,” Griffin explained.
Currently, Enerstar powers more than 5,300 homes and businesses in east-central Illinois, operating over 1,500 miles of lines in Clark, Coles, Douglas, Edgar and Vermilion counties.
“It’s a changing industry, but I don’t think our focus has ever shifted,” Griffin said. “We are not-for-profit. We are focused on our people and on the future.”