“So many people wouldn’t join at first, but when they began to run the lines, they wanted to know why they weren’t getting electricity too.” – Worth Pearce
It was almost 60 years since cities and towns began to get electric service, but once rural families around Wake Forest had the chance for electricity they signed up pretty quickly.
The first load meeting was early February 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 carry on 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. They met and elected nine incorporators – J.R. Wiggins, E.C. Hunt, J.P. Bailey, E.L. Conyers, W.P. Woodlief, L.N. Rogers, V.B. Snipes, W.G. Mangum and J.T. Shearon. Those men were later elected the cooperative’s first board of directors, and most of them were to serve for many years.
The next step was to apply to the state authority for permission to ask REA for the loan. Finally, in May, J.L. Shearon, the first manager, and J.P. Bailey and L.N. Rogers went to Washington, D.C., with the completed application. The approval for a loan of $325,000 was announced in August.
Some of that money was to build 132 miles of line to serve the original 317 homes; $200,000 was held until maps could be drawn up for 250 more miles to serve about 750 waiting members. Nash and Johnston counties were also added to the cooperative’s charter.
Shearon, who said he really had no idea of getting into the electric business until about then, opened an office in one room at the top of the stairs in the Wake Forest Town Hall (now the offices for the planning department) (and in 2018 a Wake Forest Police Department substation). A few months later the town added the one-story addition to the building, and that was Wake Electric Membership Corporation’s office until the present building was completed in 1950 (and still stands on Wait Avenue, an adjunct to the new member services building on South Franklin Street).
“There were three employees – a lineman, a bookkeeper and me,” Shearon said. George Morbley was the first lineman. James Hall and Ira D. (Shorty) Lee soon joined the crew. Lee was to be line superintendent for a number of years. The new cooperative, like the others starting up across the country, had to find and hire experienced people to work on the lines. “I never had any training in electricity,” Shearon said, though he had attended N.C. State for two years.
Lee had been part of the construction crew, and he was hired by Wake Electric on his birthday, Sept. 9, 1941. For many years, until he left in 1959, Lee was the only lineman. “Me and Leonard did all the construction and maintenance. I read every one of those meters by myself every month for years and years.” Lee said the cooperative had only 342 members when he came.
REA could help the new cooperative in many ways, including new standards for building. Utilities at that time over-built their lines and poles. “Battleship construction” it was called, said James Hubbard, manager of N.C. Electric Membership Corporation Inc. REA introduced “bare-bones” construction. It made constructing lines much less expensive, but it did have its drawbacks.
“It could thunder in Alabama and one of these rural lines would go out,” Lee said. He’d have to crank up the truck and head into the country on dirt roads to find and repair the break, usually in the dark and rain, often getting stuck. A farmer would come along and pull him out, then invite his for breakfast.
Out in the countryside, all these customer had to wire their homes and buy electric appliances at a time when money was very short. Wake EMC borrowed $10,000 from REA to lend to members. Lee said the cooperative bought 100 refrigerators and sold them on the installment plan at $80 each. He had to service the refrigerators, and all but about one had to have major repairs. “I put four or five compressors in several of them.”
“We put in a bathroom,” Bervin Woodlief remembered, “and we bought a refrigerator and a stove. We still have the same refrigerator. We got it for $139.95 from Jones Hardware.” (Editor’s note: Wake Electric was a bonanza for stores in Wake Forest with people buying appliances, bathroom fixtures and other items electricity made possible in their homes.)
Meanwhile Carolina Power & Light, like private utilities across the country, was fighting the cooperative. “They fought us every way they could,” Worth Pearce said. One way was to start building lines in the middle of the cooperative’s territory – spite lines, they were called. The first utility in a neighborhood can claim the territory. “I know they did this on (N.C.) 98.”
By mid-March, 1941, the first 141 miles of line were completed. Lee said those first lines were built “just as close to Wake Forest as it could be.”
On March 22, members gathered in the auditorium at Wake Forest High School (now the elementary school) for the big day. The program was broadcast over WRAL radio, and then most members went out to the substation south of town to watch while the switch was thrown.
That first substation was just one pole with several crossbars that held three 100-KVA transformers. “It was a great day when electric service was energized out here,” Stephenson said.
After 42 years, Woodlief can remember the date instantly. “We got electricity on April 12, 1941. E.C. Hung got it a few days earlier.”
Lois Barham, L.N. Rogers’ daughter, stayed home school the day electricity came to the family home. In her dairy she wrote that the lights went on at the house at five minutes to three on March 25, 1941.
Barham remembers how tight money was then. Her father sold eggs to Mrs. Jo Williams, who ran the Wake Forest College cafeteria. The only spanking she remembers getting, she said, was when her father found her under the house one day, breaking eggs into a churn to make a childish version of a cake.
Because a lot of families could not afford the $5 membership or the $2 monthly bill, some generous people helped them. And the money was repaid.
Work on the lines and wiring homes continued through 1941. “So many people wouldn’t join at first,” Pearce said, “but when they began to run the lines, they wanted to know why they weren’t getting electricity too.”
Along with providing the current, Wake Electric began education projects that continued for many years. With the help of model kitchens, home economists showed women how best to use their new appliances. The cooperative sponsored tours to show farmers new work-saving methods and machines in use on other farms.
By December 1941, over 500 families had lights. Then the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor and construction had to halt. All the linemen but Lee were drafted or had been drafted earlier.
The war also stopped production of appliances. Shearon was married to Edith just three weeks before the war began. They had electricity, but Mrs. Shearon remembers she couldn’t buy a washing machine. She scrubbed the diapers for two babies by hand.
It was not until the early 1950s that a lot of rural people, both here and across the country, could get electricity. But the groundwork – the legislation, the hard work, the cooperatives – were ready to serve the people because of what some outstanding men did in the 1930s and early 1940s.
Worth Pearce thought about the men he knew – Kearns, Shearon, Stephenson, Bailey. “They took a giant step, as far as I’m concerned.”
(This is the last of the Wake Electric series. In 1982 it continued with the story of electricity in Wake Forest when the town was rechartered, changing the name from the Town of Wake Forest College to the Town of Wake Forest.)
(The pictures for this part of the series are of J.L. Shearon, the first Wake Electric manager; Wake EMC’s first truck with an early lineman, either George Mobley or James Hall, parked in front of the first office, the one-story addition to the (then) town hall; Wake EMC’s float in the 1955 Wake Forest Christmas Parade with signs for the Forest Theatre, P.D. Weston’s soda shop and ice cream bar, and a banner on the float saying, “A brighter Christmas with Cooperative Electricity;” a picture of L.E. Creech milking a cow with an electric milking system; and Ira D. (Shorty) Lee with one of the “bare-bones” stations. “It could thunder in Alabama and one of those rural lines would go out.”
