Washington Youth Tour 2023

For the first time since 2019, the Electric Cooperative Youth Tour returned to Washington, D.C., this summer. Three students representing Cullman Electric Cooperative joined 50 other rising high school seniors from across Alabama to spend a week in our nation’s capital June 18-23.

Gracie Moody from Vinemont High School, Destiny Warren from Hanceville High School and Emmanuel Santiago-Silva from St. Bernard were selected to represent Cullman Electric from the group of local students who attended the AREA Montgomery Youth Tour earlier this year.

This year’s trip had stops at all the major Washington, D.C. attractions: the Lincoln Memorial, Vietnam War Memorial, Korean War Memorial, MLK Memorial, Jefferson Memorial, the Washington Monument, the White House, the World War II Memorial, the U.S. Marine Corps

War Memorial, Arlington National Cemetery, George Washington’s Mount Vernon estate, the Holocaust Memorial Museum and multiple Smithsonian museums. The trip also included unique visits to a Washington Nationals baseball game, a performance of “The Lion King” at the Kennedy Center, and a special after-hours tour of the U.S. Capitol hosted by Alabama Congressman Barry Moore.

The Alabama group was joined by more than a thousand students from other states participating in this year’s Youth Tour, a tradition that goes back to the 1950s when then-Senator and future President Lyndon B. Johnson encouraged electric cooperatives to help young men and women in rural America see and learn about the nation’s capital. The first official NRECA Youth Tour was hosted in 1964.