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Show Rural Electrification Celebrates 50 Years Saturday, May 11, 1935 Just another spring day to millions of Americans. The send-a-dime chain letter craze was at its height. Rear Admiral Byrd returned from another trip to Antartica, and the Cleveland Indians and New York Giants led the major baseball leagues. President Franklin D. Roosevelt hurriedly completed work left from the week prior to leaving for a weekend outing at the Woodmont Rod and Gun Club near Hancock, MD. Today, rural electric cooperatives own and operate a vast network of distribution and transmission lines which provide service to 70 percent of the land area of the nation. RAYBURN NORRIS REACT The Rural Electrification Act was passed by Congress in 1936, the year after RE A was created by Executive Order. Sponsored by Senator George Norris (R-NE) and Rep. Sam Rayburn (D-TX) it continued the REA and established a loan program to finance qualified entities willing to provide electric service to rural areas. Preference was given to nonprofit enterprises. One last-minute task was particularly' pleasurable to the President. He signed Executive Order 7037, creating a federal agency to begin a program of rural electrification. In creating the Rural Electrification Administration, Roosevelt had hopes of realizing the righting of a wrong he had resented since the mid-1920s and earlier. He related a few years later that his electricity bill at his rural Warm Springs cottage in Georgia "was about four times what I paid at Hyde Park, New York." That bill, he said, set him to thinking about a national plan for rural electrification. This May 11, rural electric system throughout the nation will be marking the 50th anniversary of that event. Major events commemorating the anniversary will be held in Warm Springs, Ga.; Madison, SD; Washington, DC, and at hundreds of local rural electric systems in 46 states. In 1935 rural America was in the dark nine out of ten American farms did not have electricity. FDR's signature and a people-led cooperative crusade brought power, light and economic stability to the countryside after a long and difficult, struggle against all odds. Today, nearly 1,000 member-owned rural electric systems in 46 states provide electric service to nearly 25-million people. The observance in Warm Springs is in recognition of the fact that when Roosevelt recalled his high light bill there, he went on to say that "a little cottage at Warm Springs was the birthplace of rural electrification." Bob Bergland, Executive Vice President and General Manager of the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association. Rural Electric Cooperative Association (NRECA), will deliver the keynote FDR recounted in la38 in Barnesville, CA, that he first began thinking about rural electrification while recuperating from polio at Warm Springs, CA, speech during day-long cermonies on the grounds of Roosevelt's "Little White House" in Warm Springs. In Madison, U.S. Postmaster Paul N. Carlin will officially issue the commemorative stamp in observance of the 50th Anniversary of REA. The Smithsonian Institute in Washington will conduct a program "Electrifying Change: REA's 50th Anniversary" with display of rural artifacts and an oral history program on Saturday, May 11. Bergland says the nationwide observance of the 50th Anniversary is "a recognition of and a tribute to the vision, hard work and dedication of the men and women who helped bring electricity to themselves and their neighbors. Many said it couldn't be done, but they did for themselves what others would not do for them. Against the odds, they brought power and light to the farms and villages of rural America." |