POWERGRAMS

25 HAPPY TRAILS thriving village built for Mitchell employees. He paid $5 per room for a monthly rent of $35. Beginning with supervising 17 employees, including five security guards, Yeargan would spend the next 26 years helping implement upgrades in equipment, mechanization, computers and other efficiencies that would eventually decrease staffing to six workers. A major change was phasing out workers with a single role within the dam, as employees adjusted to having multiple areas of expertise. "When I returned to Mitchell Dam, three- fourths of the group were old enough to be my father," Yeargan said. "I didn't go in thinking I knew it all, and most of my staff probably thought I didn't know anything. I wouldn't say they were trying days but they were unique for me. Those men taught me a lot, they really did. As time passed on, the situation flipped, and I was the older guy." In 2012, Southern Company Services Hydro General Manager Herbie Johnson interviewed Yeargan about transitioning upriver to Lay Dam, the company's oldest hydro plant, which opened in 1914. "He asked me to explain how I could remain in one job 26 years and still be excited about coming to work every day," said Yeargan. "I told him that it never grew old because I had so many other roles that took me around the system." Indeed, Yeargan's work within Southern Company and communities across the South would keep him moving frequently beyond the high walls and wide reservoirs of Mitchell and Lay. He gave hundreds of presentations to schoolchildren as a volunteer for the Teachers Corps, a company program from 1990-1996. He spent a decade teaching the DC Troubleshooting course and administering Craft, Knowledge and Skills tests to employees in plants systemwide. He was involved in the National Management Association in the mid-1990s, Southern Leadership Association Leader of the Year in 1995 and devoted at least a day each week during his term as state president of the Leadership Development Association in 1997-1998. "I got to meet a lot of people around the company, many more people than I'd probably ever had met if I'd just been the superintendent of Mitchell Dam," Yeargan said, while sitting in his former Lay Dam office wearing a golf shirt monogramed with "Lower Coosa Safety Committee" on the sleeve. "I didn't just go to Mitchell Dam and sit behind the desk and twiddle my thumbs. Alabama Power was a great company to let me do all of those things." Yeargan still takes great pride in efforts three decades ago to create and open The Water Course, the educational facility in Clanton that closed in 2012. He was a member of the committee President Elmer Harris organized to build a hands-on museum that would tell the story of water and how it provides the power that established the company. The committee, which included future Georgia Power CEO Chris Womack, worked for two years, with Yeargan and others often traveling to Washington, D.C., and Boston for talks with design groups in those cities. Yeargan's voice would be heard in part of the eventual exhibit. Many school groups would take a combined field trip, first visiting The Water Course before touring Mitchell Dam later in the day. By the late 1990s, Yeargan was leading up to 2,500 visitors annually through the hydro plant on the Coosa River. "That was fun," said Yeargan. "I still see people in Clanton who will say, 'I remember our tour in the third grade.'" Yeargan, meanwhile, remains active in the Clanton Rotary Club, the Chilton Baptist Builders and Beth Salem Baptist Church of Billingsley. He enjoys helping others, gardening, home renovation and, especially, spending time with his family. He married his high school sweetheart, Charlene, 42 years ago and they have two daughters: Oakley, a nurse, and Keeley, a schoolteacher; and 3-year-old grandson Paxton. "The Lord allowed me to live my dream: to work in the town I grew up in my entire career," Yeargan said. "There have been so many great people I've worked with through the years. I've had seven wonderful supervisors, all of them great people. If I could have scripted it out, I wouldn't have scripted it any differently." Yeargan was river manager of the Lower Coosa Region for a decade. Yeargan made the cover of Powergrams in 1991, with the help of happy schoolchildren.

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