Our First Sixty Years

         During the 1930s the people in rural America wanted to have the modern convenience of electricity to their homes and farms. In l935 the United States Congress passed the Rural Electrification Administration Act which provided the funding to utilities at a low interest rate. At that time, less than 11% of the farms in the United States had electricity. In the state of Indiana, the cooperatives were to be called Rural Electric Membership Corporations. The State Farm Bureau took on the task of organizing the state into Rural Electric Membership Corporations.                                          

With the help of the local Farm Bureau, an organizational meeting was held at the Romney School  on August 15, 1938. About 40 people from the northern half of Montgomery County and the southern half of Tippecanoe County attended this meeting and were asked to sign as incorporators. Wilson Taylor of the Statewide REMC also attended and discussed how to organize a local district corporation under the Indiana Rural Electric Membership Corporation Act. This group elected the first Board of Directors: John H. Bone, Ray Fisher, John Frantz, Howard Newton, Earl Patterson, Roy Wells and Lewis J. Withrow.     

            Local meetings were called in each township to secure members and report back to an area meeting held at Linden School on August 26, l938. By this time more than 1,000 people had paid their membership fees. At this meeting, the following directors were added: John Cassida, John P. Foresman, Jesse P. Graves, Will A. Gray, John Kerkhoff and Clarence A. Sennett.  A few months, later when the residents in northern Tippecanoe County and Fountain County signed up for membership, Lawrence Layden and Guy Simpson represented those areas respectively. Reid Paddack took Ray Fisher’s seat on the board.  At this meeting incorporation papers were prepared.

         The name chosen for the corporation was Tippecanoe and Montgomery Rural Electric Membership Corporation. In time the name was shortened to Tipmont REMC at the advice of the Rural Electric Administration (REA). REA designated our project as “Indiana 55 Tippecanoe”. 

Tipmont REMC was incorporated May 10, l939. At the first Board of Directors meeting John H. Bone was elected President; Howard Newton, Vice President; and Roy Wells, Secretary-Treasurer.

Verl Hiatt was sent by the Statewide REMC to prepare project maps. Mr. Hiatt became the project superintendent and later the first general manager of the cooperative. He served in that capacity for approximately 18 months. 

Right-of-way easements had to be secured from land owners before trees and brush was cleared to allow the the proposed electric lines to be staked for construction. 

Putman and Woolpert of Dayton, Ohio, a REA approved engineering firm, was selected to engineer the location of the proposed electric lines.  The first line was engineered on August 1, 1939, and the first pole was set about October 1, 1939.  The REA approved all construction projects before construction. Honold & LaPage Inc. of Sheboygan, Wisconsin, built the first 180 miles of electric lines

Before the poles could be installed, they dug all of the holes with shovels, the pole was then raised by hand by using pole spikes which were long sticks with metal pointed ends. The lineman then had to climb poles to attach wires to the insulators. The lineman wore gaff hooks and safety belts to allow them to climb the poles.

Paul Antle was hired to do the line maintenance work. He served as interim project manager. As the cooperative membership grew, there was need for a line superintendent and Antle served in that capacity until his death in l962. 

 Mary E. Shanklin was employed as the first bookkeeper and stenographer. As the cooperative membership grew, more office employees were hired.  Among them were Susie Antle, Fred E. Baber, Lela Imler, Martha Montgomery, Margaret Phipps, LaVern Rickey and Claude Smith.  The cooperative lost several male employees who served their country during World War II. 

Some of the early maintenance and field employees were Kenneth Hartman, Wallace Hood, Andrew Johnson, Roy Meharry, Russell Payne, George Simmons, Buren C Stewart, Ed Street, Roy Wells, and James Wright. Some of these men worked on getting right-of-way easements signed so the poles could be set and lines constructed while others did wiring inspections and hooked up services to the primary lines.  In a recent interview with Roy and Mary Ellen Meharry, Mrs. Meharry remembers the times she and Susie Antle would go with their husbands to hold the flash lights so the linemen could make repairs to the lines during night time outages.

As the cooperative grew, the Board of Directors was faced with a lot of major decisions, such as office space, purchasing office equipment and vehicles, protecting legal documents, line materials, type of transformers and meters to be used. They chose Duncan meters since they were manufactured in Lafayette, Indiana.  

The Board of Directors felt the members needed to know what was happening at their cooperative monthly, so they began a newsletter.  In November 1940, they offered a prize of one free electric bill (not to exceed  $5.00) to be given to the consumer who submitted the best name. The winning entry was Tips of the Month, submitted by Robert Berry of Hillsboro.  

 In l943, the Board purchased the Battle Ground service lines from the Southeastern Power Co. The purchase price was not in excess of the per member cost of our present existing lines less the cost of re-building the lines to be purchased. 

 In the fall of l947, a two-way radio system was installed between the office and the trucks.  Prior to that time, the linemen would go to the local telephone office and call the Linden office to see if there were any more outages in the particular area before they left.

The Board voted to purchase the stock of Montgomery Light and Power Company which included the towns of Linden, New Richmond and Wingate and the surrounding rural area in 1947.  

 By the mid l960’s, the cooperative was rapidly growing in Tippecanoe County area.  At this time the Board of Directors felt the need of having service trucks dispatched from the northern part of the county to lessen the response time during outages. They purchased land along county road 600 N and built a garage/warehouse that houses the trucks, material and equipment to provide faster electrical service to the Tippecanoe county residents.  Nine employees presently work out of the Battle Ground work center.

The middle and late l960’s brought many changes to the electrical industry. Total Electric Living homes, home electronics and all kinds of small electric appliances were being marketed. The Tipmont Board of Directors felt the need to add a home economist to the member service staff to answer questions and promote the use of the new appliances. The home economist not only went to the area schools, but she attended many meetings and organizations to teach consumers all about these new “gadgets” everyone was wanting.  New homebuilders listened to her expert advise to help plan and build state-of-the-art electrical heated homes in the rural and suburban communities.

 Up until the late l970’s, designated people in the community took outage calls. The members would call their area trouble call reporter and then the trouble call reporter would relay information to Tipmont REMC headquarters. The community reporters who took these outage calls were not on Tipmont REMC’s payroll. These people felt it was their civic duty to make sure that they supplied the line crews with all the necessary information so their neighbors could have their electricity restored quickly at all times, day or night. Often, the trouble call reporters would call their neighbors back with the information they found out regarding their outage

Over the past 60 years Tipmont REMC has grown to become the 5th largest REMC in Indiana, serving 22,000 meters.

HEADQUARTERS

Tipmont REMC has been housed in four buildings. 

The first coop office was a small building on the west side of Highway 231, just north of the Linden Post Office. The building was once a dentist office and later an antique and craft shop. 

After outgrowing that building, the coop offices moved across the street to the building that housed the Linden State Bank. for many years, and is now an insurance agency.

At the l950 annual meeting, board president Graves announced that the board had purchased ground on the west side of Highway 231 at the south edge of Linden, and a new headquarters building would be constructed soon. The open house for the new building was held on December 15, l951 and was dedicated “To advance the position of Agriculture.  To enrich the life of the community.  To free men and women from the heavy drudgery of the farm and home.  As a part of their rural electric system this building is dedicated to the farmers to whom it supplies the blessing of electricity.”  This building served Tipmont REMC needs for 30 years. 

In June l981, Tipmont REMC moved into the current headquarters building.  The Coop moved the office equipment and records in an amazing two day period and the office was never closed.   Employees were maintained at both locations until each department was completely moved.  In 1997, there was remodeling done to the general office area.  Supervisors have their own offices and customer service area was improved. The North Montgomery School Corporation purchased the old building on the West side of US 231 and has since sold it to others.

DIRECTORS / MANAGEMENT 

Fifty-three men and one woman have served on the Tipmont REMC Board of Directors.