Mister Hampton

Ted Hampton, ’62, is the longest serving manager/CEO of any rural electric cooperative in the United States. April 2022 marks 58 years in the position. He was just 24 years old when his uncle, Bill Hampton, who had been leading Cumberland Valley Electric (CVE) for 10 years, suffered a sudden heart attack and passed away in 1964. At the time, Ted was teaching at a local high school. The managers at CVE approached Hampton and asked if he would step into his uncle’s shoes and lead the company. He discussed it with his dad, who said, “Go for it.” He has been the manager ever since.

The co-op’s headquarters consist of a set of buildings off US-25E in Corbin, Kentucky. Inside the main building sits Hampton’s office. It’s as though an office space moved into the living room of an old-school Kentucky home. 1970s-style wood paneling covers the walls, and a large, dark-stained wooden desk commands the room. One upholstered chair is placed off to the side of the room, and two more sit across from the desk.

The desk is organized. A few piles of paper bound with binder clips lay neatly on top of each other, awaiting Hampton’s signature. Next to the stack is a Styrofoam cup with still-steaming black coffee. Hampton holds an impromptu meeting every morning to go over the day’s agenda; some staff have their mugs they sip from, he prefers a simple cup. In the left corner of the desk sits a red and pink Valentine’s Day coffee mug (go figure) with a miniature sock monkey inside – a gift from Hampton’s wife. On the right corner sits a small picture frame with an image of Hampton’s granddaughter, Tory, smiling for the camera. Hampton’s daughter Amy, Tory’s mother, who also attended Cumberlands, passed away in 2013. Hampton and his wife, Margie (Jones) Hampton, ’70, are raising Tory. In a feature story in Kentucky Living about Ted’s battle with COVID-19 – during which he was in the hospital on a ventilator for 31 days – Margie said that, when Ted was so sick he didn’t recognize anybody else, he still recognized Tory every time.

She’s one of the reasons Hampton is still working at the age of 82. “I’ve got a baby to raise!” he says. But she isn’t the only reason. He shrugs, “I have just always liked what I’m doing.”

The Job

The Cumberland Valley Electric co-op was formed by local business and community leaders back in 1940 to bring electricity to the more rural areas of eastern Kentucky. It now services more than 23,600 members/owners across nine counties in Kentucky and two counties in Tennessee.

Richard Prewitt, ’80, a man with a big voice and a Boston accent that has persevered despite years of Kentucky living, is the director of marketing, economic development, member services, and safety at CVE. He explains, “Cumberland Valley is a distribution cooperative. So, we don’t produce any power. We get all our power from East Kentucky Power, which is up in Winchester. They make it, they bring it to us, and we sell it to houses and businesses.”

Prewitt was a high school principal when Hampton offered him a job at CVE 10 years ago. Of the bosses he's had, Hampton is "at the top of the tree." In his words, "There's not another Cumberlands graduate more worthy of recognition."

Hampton’s coworkers call him “Mister Hampton” and still typically refer to him as the “manager” instead of “CEO” because for many years the official title was “co-op manager.” Hampton has overseen several technological advances for the co-op. Two big technological changes stick out in Hampton’s mind: the dispatching system and the bill payment system.

Dispatching system: The Outage Management Room boasts one large screen that covers most of a wall, plus two smaller screens on the left and right, and computers in the back of the room controlling them all. With the room’s lights turned off and only the glow of the screens illuminating people’s faces, the room resembles a scene from a cop show. The large center screen is a map of CVE’s coverage. As people call in to report an outage, the CVE team can see where and what the problem is and dispatch someone to the area to fix it.

Being a rural cooperative, CVE faces a number of issues (trees, rivers, mountains, etc.) that they have to work around. But it’s easy enough on a typical day. Major outages, like after winter storms, are a different story.

“Ice is worse for us than snow,” Prewitt says. “One thing it does is, it sticks to the power lines and weighs them down. When they touch each other, that causes a problem.” When the problem is widespread and complicated, Prewitt says, “We’ll have days where we work until late at night, then go home, get some sleep, and show up early the next morning. And we’ll do that however long it takes. Anything to get the lights back on.”

Bill payment: In the late 1990s, CVE pioneered an automated meter reading system. Hampton recalls, “In the beginning, a member would call in their usage, and we billed them based on what they told us.” The new meters communicate with computers in the office to report on usage. It was a headache, at times, configuring everything, but it’s a more trustworthy and efficient system.

Besides pioneering the new system, CVE has received special attention for its commitment to low prices. It has continually offered some of the lowest rates of any co-op in the nation, which once prompted a visit from Joanne Emerson, president of the National World Electric Cooperative at the time.

Explains Prewitt, “She came to get a grasp on how we help our most impoverished members who have big, expensive bills in the wintertime. CVE leads the state in programs to help people in those situations. Visits like that from people in Washington, D.C., are a rarity. But Mister Hampton is a superstar when it comes to trying to take care of people. He has devoted his entire life to making sure they have low electricity rates.”

College Influence

A home-grown “country boy and proud of it,” Hampton grew up between Barbourville and Pineville, Kentucky. His parents pushed him to attend college and, because Cumberlands was close to home, that was Hampton’s choice. As a student, he spent his summers working for an engineering firm in Bowling Green. He also overloaded his class schedule in college so he could graduate a semester early. His only regret about it was that he didn’t have his senior season for track and field; he was a “speedster,” as he puts it, competing as an anchor on short relay teams, running the 100 and the 220, and doing broad jump. He graduated with plenty of athletic accomplishments, a degree in social studies and physical education, and great memories.

“Dr. John Renfro and Coach Duke treated me like I was one of their sons,” he says. “Renfro was an official for high school games, and, when he was going to go call ball, he’d take me with him. That was great. I enjoyed that very much.”

He’s brought that atmosphere of comradery – intentionally or not – to CVE with him. He hums softly to himself as he walks through the hallways, and he greets everyone he sees. He compliments the workers to their faces and asks if they need anything from him before he returns to his office. He doesn’t move as fast as he used to, but his mind is still quick as a whip. His employees all know he would never ask them to do something that he wouldn’t roll up his sleeves in a second and do himself. And he gives credit wherever it’s due.

“It was quite a change from chasing kids to working for a utility company,” he says, recounting his first year at CVE. “The employees here took care of me, telling me, ‘Do that, don’t do this.’ I give them credit for my success my first year. And after I learned the job, then it just became routine stuff.”

Sometimes, life is like that – just routine. Just a simple life, going from the office to home and back again. Yet, as Hampton’s life shows, being diligent in the simple stuff makes as much of a difference as showing up for the bigger things. Or, maybe the simple things were the big things all along.