This Op-Ed was authored by Rebecca Towne, CEO of Vermont Electric Cooperative and Chair of the Vermont Business Roundtable’s Board of Directors
My grandfather Harold Putnam was a farmer in Cambridge and proud to be part of bringing electricity to rural Vermont. I recently came across a 1939 speech from his effects, written in beautiful cursive describing their multi-year process and the people who worked so hard to make it happen. It begins with the following story:
Mrs. M. Maynard asked Ernest Hubbard as he stopped to pick up the milk, “when are we ever going to have electric lights up here?”
“Well,” Ernest replies, “The county agent says we can have them any time we want them if we work together and go after them… when willing to put effort enough into it and pull together.” (more…)
