The final day has come. I am cleaning out my files and sorting through piles in preparation for my departure from PCEC and I am asking myself, “Why?”
Why have I kept all this stuff, I wonder? I sort through correspondence which holds so many special messages. There is a card from a member thanking us for a great annual meeting. A member writes after living on PCEC lines for 47 years. A colored picture is a child’s way of expressing thanks for a hard hat he received. Yet another says thank you after an ice storm, and someone else is pleased with his new heat pump.
After reading the notes, I realize I kept them to serve as a reminder. They remind me what my job, and this cooperative is all about: It’s about people. Platte-Clay is not poles or lines or rebates or capital credits or load control or community development. It’s people providing power and other people using power.
The notes help me remember we can’t spend enough time listening to what our members are saying. Now, all of you who read this column can consider this page my thank you for listening to me for eight years.
My family, of course, will be grateful I’m gone so they won’t run the risk of surfacing as one of my subjects. As for me, it’s not so easy to leave.
In the olden days, when pens were the primary vehicle for written communication, a tear would cause the ink to run. What happens when it is a computer keyboard? I guess I’m about to find out.
