‘They took a giant step’
Wake Electric began operations with three employees in WF’s Town Hall By Carol Pelosi (This series of three articles was first published in 1984 and the dates in the article are based on 1984.) It had been almost sixty years since people in North Carolina’s cities and towns began to get electric service, but once rural families around Wake Forest had the chance to get electricity, they signed up pretty quickly. The first local meeting was early in February of 1940, and the news about the new cooperative had to be carried from house to house, store to store, by men who also had to continue to work their own farms to feed their families. But by April of 1940, 317 families in Wake, Franklin, Durham, Granville and Vance counties had paid their $5 and signed applications. Members of those families met, we do not know where, and elected nine
