Coosa Valley Electric Cooperative celebrated its 50th anniversary in fine form in 1989, but the scars of its membership “war" three years earlier still showed.

Still, the fury that engulfed CVEC astonished him. “This thing got real nasty. It's a wonder to me that someone didn't get hurt."

Five years earlier at the co-op's annual meeting, an angry band of members who called themselves the Concerned Citizens overthrew the laid-back board of directors that had run the co-op for years. They campaigned on the promise of lower rates, and threatened to shutter the co-op if they weren't successful.

When a judge wouldn't let CVEC tear up its wholesale power contract with Alabama Electric Cooperative (G&T) and a dissolution vote failed at a special membership meeting, the new directors attempted to run the co-op into the ground by firing essential employees and cutting programs.

Meanwhile, another member group, the Save Our Co-op Committee, asked for help from the Alabama statewide, the G&T, and, eventually, NRECA.

Concerned Citizens members branded the group's members “puppets" and “stooges" in letters and quotes that played prominently in the pages of the local Daily Home newspaper.

“This damn thing was war, mentally, emotionally and physically," Fuller told Vanvig.

The firings and budget cuts eroded service; line crews found themselves running from trouble call to trouble call. “I never saw my kids," Line Foreman Howard Cooley recalled.

He started leaving his CVEC hat in the truck when he ran an errand in town. “You didn't want nobody to know you worked for the co-op, or you'd end up in a fight."

Fuller, who was eventually fired, took to calling the statewide from a pay phone, believing that his office and home phones had been tapped. Someone poured sugar into his car's gas tank, and a load of horse manure was dumped in his carport.

Other employees and co-op members reported having nails strewn on their driveways, car wiring tampered with and mailboxes destroyed.

Eventually, employees and members who had stayed loyal to the co-op felt the tide turn their way. The Concerned Citizens war of nerves was having diminishing returns.

Eight hundred Save Our Co-op supporters crowded into a Talladega auditorium for a special membership meeting in May1986—four times the number of Concerned Citizens attendees—and quickly executed a putsch.

One of the new board's first acts was to rehire Fuller and Member Services Director Don Brannon, who had worked at Coosa Valley Electric for 20 years before he was precipitously fired by the Concerned Citizens board.

Co-ops throughout the state responded to the “new" CVEC's plea for help repairing and rebuilding lines. One sent a crew that worked in the Talladega area for five solid weeks. Members and employees gladly boarded them.

Head arrived a few months later, and his management skills and experience were widely credited with nursing CVEC back to health. He found financing so the co-op could buy or lease vehicles to fill the gaps in its depleted fleet. He met personally with disgruntled members, and instituted new board meeting procedures that prevented disruptions.

Most important, he preached service. Head proudly showed Vanvig a binder that contained the first work plan CVEC had completed in decades.

“There's been more work done in the last two years—more wire put up in the air, more poles put into the ground—than there had been in 35 to 40 years."

When co-op members see work going on to improve service, they are less likely to become “inflamed" over rates, he added.

“How are you going to inflame people when they're being served," he added.

It's a lesson every utility must learn.