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April 2014


Fred Stowe, longtime SWRE trustee, recently resigned from the co- op board after 48 years of service. Stowe has represented SWRE’s district 2 on the co-op’s governing board since 1966.


District 2 is the area that includes Blair and northern Jackson County of Oklahoma.


Stowe and his wife Almeta remain active in their church and the Warren community, but some health issues over the past year made him believe that this is the right time to give up his seat on the board. “It’s been a joy,” he said of his 48 years on the SRWE board. “I’ve been proud to be a part of it.” Stowe grew up in the Lone Wolf


area. At age 18 he was hired by a utility construction contractor to help build power distribution lines – called


contractor was at Woodward, digging holes for setting poles. He practiced climbing poles, though, and got good enough that he soon moved to string- ing wire.


For eight years he helped build power lines in Oklahoma, Nebraska, Missouri, and New Mexico. Stowe and his wife Almeta wanted to farm and in 1955 they bought some land near Warren and left utility construction behind for a career in farming. He couldn’t have known then that much of his life would continue to focus on electrical utilities. As farm residents in the Warren area the Stowes received their electric- ity from Southwest Rural Electric and were SWRE members. In 1966 Stowe was appointed to the SWRE Board of Trustrees to replace outgoing director Forrest Schnorrenberg.


His membership on the board would span 48 years. During most of those years Stowe led the board as


Volume 61


Number 4


Stowe Ends Tenure On SWRE Board Of Trustees president.


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cades, Stowe notes that the changes have been vast.


“In 1966 our linemen climbed every


pole. We didn’t have bucket trucks.” He also notes that in the 1960s there were no co-op computers. All ac- counts and record keeping were done manually.


In contrast, today the co-op’s busi-


are totally automated and the co-op has recently completed a mapping system that assigns GPS locations to every co-op pole, transformer or other asset.


Stowe says that perhaps the big- gest change that he’s seen during his years with the co-op is in meter reading.


“In the old days, every member was responsible for reading their own meter and providing those readings to the co-op.” There was never a thought that anyone would be dishonest with their readings.


In the early ‘80s SWRE hired meter readers to actually take the readings from each meter. Today the co-op has installed AMR technology which relays meter read- ings directly to SWRE. The technol- ogy has been used in recent years to curtail power use by irrigators on summer peak days. In the near future it will help with outage management and allow members to monitor their power usage.


In 1980 Stowe became SWRE’s representative on the board of West- ern Farmers Electric Cooperative. He served as president of the WFEC board for seven years (1987-92 and 1996-98).


In the 1930s, rural cooperatives were created by political action, and Stowe sees the necessity of continued


Fred and Almeta Stowe


political involvment by co-ops and their members.


on the board we’d go to meetings and senators and congressmen would tell us how they helped co-ops get started... and they did.” Politicians knew the importance of rural electric cooperatives. It was easier then to get the ear of government leaders.


to get in to talk with them, but it is more important than ever for co-op members to stay politically connected because government decisions do af- fect co-op operations and rates. Looking back over his many years


of the people he has worked with or


people, not only on our board and in our co-op, but across the state and the United States. You learn a lot talking to each other.”


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