Affordable and reliable electricity strengthens cooperative communities and enhances the lives of members wherever they are — on farms, in homes or schools, at their small businesses or large retail establishments, or even in industrial and manufacturing facilities. While it’s essential to meet our obligations to current cooperative members, we must also work to support economic development activities that help attract new people and enterprises to cooperative territories, with the aim of further benefiting these communities.
Along the eastern edge of Alum Creek State Park in central Ohio runs a thoroughfare called Africa Road. I’ve lived in the general vicinity for years, and the road’s name always seemed a bit odd to me.
Late last fall, just off Africa Road in Alum Creek State Park, the ODNR unveiled the first of four planned “Heritage of Freedom” trails in the state commemorating Ohio’s contribution to the Underground Railroad. “The Underground Railroad is a key part of Ohio’s history,” says Mary Mertz, director of ODNR. “This Heritage of Freedom Trail serves as a visual history lesson and provides an immersive way to see what freedom-seekers faced in Ohio’s natural environment during this time in history.”
In the small Hardin County village of Ada, the play clock begins ticking about two weeks before the first snap of America’s most-watched sporting event.
“As soon as they know who wins, they are making these balls and they are shipping them out,” says Lindsay Hollar, director of the Ada Area Chamber of Commerce. “The guys just want to get their hands on them.” Hollar doesn’t work for Wilson, but like lots of people in and around town, she speaks with a sort of proprietary pride about the local treasure that is the Wilson football.
Church & Dwight, a multibillion-dollar manufacturing company, has expanded its Seneca County facility twice in the past five years, adding more than $90 million in machinery and new capacity and creating 140 new jobs in the process.
The Tiffin-Seneca Economic Partnership (TSEP) and the Fostoria Economic Development Corporation (FEDC) have been active in finding ways to help the area beat some tilted economic odds — and Attica-based North Central Electric Cooperative has been working to be an important partner in those efforts.
Bella Rogers’ devotion to Irish dance has taken her around the world. It’s propelled her to competitions throughout the United States and Canada and across the pond in England, Ireland, and Scotland.
In 2017, she began dancing at the Academy in Westerville, where she currently studies with instructors and World Irish Dance champions Byron Tuttle, a former Lord of the Dance and Feet of Flames dancer, and Edward Searle, a former Riverdance dancer. Since the studio moved to Westerville from Birmingham, England, in 2011, dancers who have trained at the Academy have won 25 World Irish Dancing championships in both the solo and team sections. “I’m very lucky to have a school so great so close,” Rogers says.
The 900 or so electric cooperatives in this country deliver electricity to 42 million Americans in 48 states across 56 percent of the nation’s landmass. In Ohio, the state’s co-ops serve more than 1 million people in 77 of the state’s 88 counties.
According to a report commissioned by the national co-op organization, local electric cooperatives supported about 623,000 American jobs and contributed $111 billion annually to gross domestic product from 2018 through 2022. Their activities have far-reaching impacts across the country — even in areas where co-ops do not serve consumers directly.
“People call here thinking that we have the answer to every question,” Hunter says. “WVNU was the internet before the internet; for some around here, it still is the internet.” He reaches for a stack of papers, finds the report, and gives the caller the information.
It’s from here that WVNU, a tiny 2,300-watt radio station known as Lite 97.5, has been broadcasting adult contemporary hits from the second floor of a downtown office building for the last 30 years.
