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Original Incorporators

Editor’s note: The following are a series of articles profiling the original incorporators of Basin Electric Power Cooperative, which will be published over the next several months in celebration of 50 years of incorporation (May 5, 2011).

Feature articles about Basin Electric's original incorporators

On this page

Alphabetical list of original incorporators' feature articles:

Edna Hanlon
Leon Birdsall
Leroy Schecher
L.H. "Larry" Jacobson
Otto Schneider
Roger F. Johnson
Virgil T. Hanlon

Click on the above links to be taken to an incorporator's story.

On May 5, 1961, 69 people from several states gathered at the Patterson Hotel in Bismarck, ND, to sign Articles of Incorporation for Basin Electric. Their names are on a brass plaque immediately outside of the main entrance to the Headquarters building. Kathi Risch, Basin Electric senior staff writer/editor, has been trying to find out more about the original incorporators.

In the next several months, prior to the cooperative’s 50th anniversary celebration to be held at the 2011 annual meeting, Risch will share what she has uncovered. If you have information you would like to share about a Basin Electric original incorporator and you haven’t been contacted, please call Risch at 701-557-5606 or send information, photo scans, etc. to krisch@bepc.com.

Edna C. Hanlon

Edna C. Hanlon

Edna C.”Pete” Hanlon was the only woman of Basin Electric’s 69 original incorporators. She signed the Articles of Incorporation as Mrs. V.T. Hanlon, as was customary at the time, so that is how her name is presented on the plaque at the entrance of Basin Electric’s Headquarters.

Edna Petersen was born on Sept. 6, 1910, to Mamie and Louis Petersen. She grew up in the Arlington, SD, area and attended General Beadle State College (now Dakota State University) in Madison, SD.

She met Virgil "V.T." Hanlon while they were both teaching in Alcester, SD. She taught primary school. Virgil and Edna were married in 1938. In 1951, they moved to Madison, SD, after he was named general manager of the newly formed East River Electric Power Cooperative and East River established its headquarters there.

Virgil died in 1969. She moved to Sioux Falls, SD, and spent winters in Naples, FL. In 1998, she moved back to Sioux Falls as a permanent residence. Since early 2005, she had been living at King Street Assisted Living and Nursing Home in a suburb of New York City. She died this year on March 25 at the age of 99.

She and Virgil had a daughter and son-in-law, Pamela Hanlon Hanley and Charles J. Hanley of Manhattan, NY.

Leon Birdsall

Leon Birdsall was born Aug. 25, 1899 in Summit, SD, to Edgar F. and Alberta Birdsall. He came to North Dakota in 1903 with his parents. He farmed in Passport Township, northwest of Berthold, ND, with his brother, Don, and nephew, Ralph, joined the farming operation later.

Birdsall and his brother Don both signed up members for Verendrye Electric Cooperative (VEC). Leon was elected to the VEC board of directors in 1950 and served as president from 1954 until he retired in 1971. He was active in rural electric co-ops (RECs) in North Dakota and nationally, and was an incorporator of Basin Electric. He was also a member of the Berthold Farmers Union Oil Company, the Non-Partisan League and the Passport Township Board.

His nephew, Ralph, followed in his cooperative footsteps, retiring in 2010 from the VEC board after 39 years. For the first time in 60 years there will be no Birdsall on VEC’s board.

Birdsall’s niece, Geraldine L. “Jerry” Meyer, credited her interest in politics from the first time her uncle took her to political meetings in the 1950s. Meyer served as a North Dakota State Senator from 1982 to 1989.

Birdsall’s personal papers provided by his family included three 8”x10” photos of him and others from the North Dakota delegation at the 1964 National Democratic Convention imprinted with “Newsweek Atlantic City 1964” and his convention floor pass.
They also included his heart-felt comments delivered on the occasion of his retirement from the Verendrye board:

“Verendrye is one of those organizations that seems to spin a web around those who serve as members, employees, directors. There is a feeling of personal pride in all of us that have had the opportunity to represent our REC. I served for 21 years on the VEC board. The fascination of those years will stay with me, just reliving what we attempted to do and what part we accomplished. Verendrye, in cooperation with like-minded RECs in the Missouri Basin, built the first unit and now are building the second of what will be the largest REC complex in the world. We serve in a block the larger part of eight states. This is the famous Missouri Basin Systems Group territory. Those that have been fortunate enough to have had a hand in the early days of Verendrye and Basin now have to step aside for younger men. We cheer the younger men and thank the members for giving us these fascinating years. That is the way it is supposed to be, but I wouldn’t be surprised if most of us wouldn’t trade the so-called golden years in for a chance to be beside you building unit(s) two and three.”

Also included are letters to Birdsall from U.S. Sens. Quentin Burdick and Milton R. Young, Gov. William L. Guy, and U.S. Congressman Art Link, all of North Dakota, on his retirement as president of Verendrye. There are also a number of letters from Sen. Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts. One dated Oct. 23, 1964 appears to be in response to a get-well card Birdsall sent to Kennedy after his near fatal plane crash in June of 1964.* Two others dated May 13, 1969, and March 11, 1970 offer words of encouragement to Birdsall on his illness.

Birdsall passed away shortly after his retirement on July 29, 1972. He was 72 years old.

Speaking about area rural electric pioneers including his uncle, Helge Nygren, and Lawrence Erickson in an interview with Bruce Carlson for Verendrye’s history book, Ralph Birdsall said, “You know, you suppose that had it not been them, there would have been another group, but … I’ve always been the kind of believer that there’s a time for things to happen and at that time the right guys come forward and they get it to happen and that was definitely the time. The right guys were there and they stepped up and they did the job. … These guys had the foresight and the knowledge and dedication and, above all, completely unselfish motives. They had no motive of self-wealth or anything to come from this; they just did it because it was the thing to get done.”

On considering if the Lignite group philosophy on power supply would have prevailed rather than the Basin Electric philosophy, Ralph Birdsall said “… nobody really knows what might have happened, but I have a hard time believing it could have been better than it turned out. And it’s just due to those guys. They did a lot of gravel road politics getting things to come out the way it did.”

*Sen. Birch Bayh (Evan’s dad), dragged his wife and Kennedy out of the wreckage. The pilot and Kennedy’s aide died.

Leroy Schecher

As one of the original incorporators of Basin Electric, Leroy Schecher’s name, along with 68 others, is embossed on a metal plaque near the front entrance of the Headquarters building. He was barely 30 years old when the cooperative was started in 1961. Since then, Schecher has been an advocate of rural electric and telephone cooperative programs and a public servant for rural America.

Leroy Schecher

Schecher started at Grand Electric Cooperative in Bison, SD, on Sept. 22, 1952. He was 21 years old “… What got me there was a hail storm and a rain storm. I was living on the farm and when the storm was over, there was nothing left. It was obvious I needed to find a job, so I went to town and just happened that one of my high school classmates, who had been working for Grand, was leaving to go to college and when he walked out, I walked in, and they hired me.” Schecher stayed for 31 years and worked his way up to manager.

Schecher said he was aware something had to be done about power supply in 1960 and 1961.

He said the group relied on the advice of Leland Olds because Fred Aandahl, assistant secretary of Interior (Eisenhower administration) had been telling the cooperatives “that all the power that could be generated from the Missouri River dams has been allocated, so if you are going to grow, you’ve got to do something for yourselves. That was generally the story as I remember it.”

Schecher became Grand Electric’s manager on June 9, 1961, and the incorporation of Basin Electric was just a month earlier on May 5. He said the former manager had already resigned, so he went along with a number of the Grand Electric board to help incorporate Basin Electric.

“I think there was probably three or four of the directors that were along; I remember that day real well. We drove to Bismarck and back,” Schecher said. “… There were a lot of people there from all over: North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, Minnesota, and I think Iowa.”

“… I know we drove home that day in the daylight and so, no, I don’t think it was real long (meeting).” He said a smaller planning group met a number of times before that day.

In the years since Basin Electric’s incorporation, Schecher served as general manager of both Grand Electric and West River Cooperative Telephone Company until January 1984.

From January 1984 until March 1986, he was involved in private business. In March of 1986 he became general manager of Minnesota Valley Cooperative Light and Power Association in Montevideo, MN. He held that position until he retired on Jan. 5, 1996. He took an interim job as manager of FEM Electric Cooperative, Ipswitch, SD, from September 1999 to January 2000. He also helped incorporate the former North Central Data Cooperative (now National Information Solutions Cooperative) in Mandan, ND, and the Cooperative Response Center in Austin, MN.

Schecher lives in Rapid City, SD, with his wife Carol. For the work he’s done for cooperatives throughout more than half a century, Schecher was inducted into the South Dakota Cooperative Hall of Fame on Sept. 11, 2007.

Schecher said Basin Electric has grown beyond his wildest imagination “But, you know, I … was pretty new to these kinds of challenges that it just seemed to me that it was a good way to do it and probably the only way. There just didn’t seem to be anything else and so we just sort of put our shoulder to the wheel, I guess, and decided we were going to see it through.”

L.H. “Larry” Jacobson

Article submitted by Dan Hutt, general manager, for Black Hill Electric Cooperative.

Lawrence H. “Larry” Jacobson served two roles when he signed the Articles of Incorporation for Basin Electric. He was general manager of Rushmore Electric Power Cooperative and he was a director on Black Hills Electric Cooperative’s (BHEC’s) board. He was elected to the board of directors of BHEC in 1953 and served for 26 years including three years as president and nine years as secretary. He was selected as Rushmore’s second general manager in 1954 and served in that capacity until 1966.

Jacobson graduated from the University of Minnesota, College of Engineering and before coming to the Black Hills served as district engineer for the Civil Works Administration in Chicago; regional engineer for the Works Projects Administration; deputy state administrator for the Illinois Work Projects Administration; and assistant supervisor Production Control Mechanical Division of General Mills in Minneapolis. During World War II he served as deputy area director for the War Manpower Commission and assistant regional engineer for the Federal Works Agency.

Jacobson and his wife Elizabeth lived in the Stratobowl, a hollow in the Black Hills southwest of Rapid City known as the Cape Canaveral of balloon launching. Their home served as a headquarters for numerous famous balloon launchings including the 1935 launching of the highest altitude manned balloon flight, military cosmic ray study balloons in the 1960s, and the 1970s attempts by Maxie Anderson to become the first person to circumnavigate the earth in a balloon.*

Jacobson died in 1986 at the age of 86.

*Steve Fossett became the first person to achieve a solo balloon flight around the world succeeding on his sixth attempt in 2002, launching and landing in Australia. His first solo attempt was launched from the Stratobowl in 1996.

Otto Schneider

Excerpts from the December 1979 Basin Electric Report Magazine and other Basin Electric resources.

Born April 25, 1903, in Hosmer, SD, Otto Schneider was involved with cooperatives most of his life. He said cooperatives involve people willing to work together for people. “Cooperatives are the best voice rural Americans have.”

Schneider operated a grain and livestock farm near McLaughlin, SD. In the early days of rural electric cooperatives, Schneider said he traveled from farm to farm signing up members. Some were anxious to become members; others were hesitant. Schneider chuckled as he remembered, “One fellow told me I was crazy for supporting an idea like rural electricity, (saying) ‘how were they going to get poles for the line when there weren’t any trees in the area?’”

From 1950 until 1971, he served as a director (10 years as president) for Moreau-Grand Electric Cooperative in Timber Lake, SD. He also served as a director from 1958 to 1962 for Dakotas Electric. He served on the Basin Electric board of directors from November 1961 to November 1972 and represented Basin Electric on the North Dakota Association of Rural Electric Cooperative’s board. In addition, he was a director on the South Dakota Rural Electric Association (SDREA) Board and was honored as SDREA’s Man of the Year in 1971.

Schneider was involved in other cooperatives as well. He served on the organizing board and as first manager of the Farmer’s Union Oil Company at McLaughlin, SD. He served 23 years as director of the local Farmers Cooperative Elevator Association, acting as either secretary or chairman throughout his tenure. He also helped organize his local rural telephone cooperative.
Otto recalled hearing Leland Olds, former chairman of the Federal Power Commission and champion of consumer-owned electric systems, speak on regional power in the late 1950s in Rapid City, SD. “When I heard Le-Old’s speech I knew there was a lot to be done, but I never thought Basin Electric would be the size it is today,” Schneider said in 1979. “I remember when General Manager James Grahl and his secretary were the only employees.”

Thinking back on the years he was on Basin Electric’s board of directors, Schneider said, “We had fewer problems then. … It’s become quite a battle to build a power plant. I think that in my day people were more interested in electricity because they’d never had the advantages of its use before.”

He saw the cooperative’s greatest challenge in the future as getting the younger people involved. Too many take electric power for granted, he said.

“Citizen involvement in rural electric programs is just as vital today as it was during the early days when we traveled from farm to farm to build membership. Young people must become more involved in their cooperatives if they hope to maintain the electrical conveniences they have today.” Schneider died Aug. 8, 1985.

Roger F. Johnson

A large portion of this profile is excerpted from a June 1976 bicentennial souvenir issue of the Northern Electric (Virginia, MN) Newsletter, “Electricity and People.” The article was provided by Leo Wilenius (author unknown). The article has been edited and updated.

Little did young Roger F. Johnson dream as a South Dakota farm boy that someday he would become involved in the advancement of rural electrification. His father had often told him how he had twisted hay and hunted buffalo chips for fueling the stoves, which heated their first house on the prairie. A half century later, some of the prairie houses would be heated by electricity.

Electricity, however, was farthest from Johnson’s mind while growing up. He became acquainted with the blister-forming work that goes with farming. Later he went to work for Swift & Co. as a produce buyer at Mountain Lake in southwestern Minnesota. Then came World War II and Johnson entered the Army, advancing to the rank of staff sergeant during his three-year stint in the Signal Corps. Discharged in 1946, Johnson returned to Clear Lake in South Dakota where his father was operating a service station and an apiary at the time. Johnson’s limited formal education could have been a handicap except for night school and correspondence courses. He wanted to advance himself so he studied bookkeeping and accounting.

Johnson’s rural electric career began at H-D Electric Cooperative in Clear Lake on March 1, 1948, where he started as the assistant bookkeeper and eventually moved up to office manager.

In 1955 he became manager of Douglas Electric Cooperative in Armour, SD. It was while managing Douglas that he became an original incorporator of Basin Electric. Johnson said he doesn’t remember much about the meeting, but remembers traveling to and from the meeting by plane.

Johnson became manager of Northern Electric Cooperative Association* in 1962. He said there was quite a contrast between Douglas Electric and Northern Electric. “Douglas had about 1,000 members and seven employees and Northern had about 20,000 members and 40 employees,” he said. “More sleepless nights and difficult terrain; I left the prairie for trees, ledge rocks and bogs. We also served mining and logging operations.”

Leo Wilenius, manager, energy & environmental services, Lake County Power,* said. “Roger was our manager when I first came to Northern Electric Cooperative and I can attest that he had a lasting impact on people—stories on his decisions and philosophies are still circulated around the office by those who worked with him. He believed that you need to ‘watch pennies and the dollars will take care of themselves.’"

“ ... he and his generation were on the forefront of many of the issues we continue to deal with today—power cost adjustments, rising rates, securing energy needs, energy conservation, ‘Wait till Eight’* and even fighting for the very existence of the REA program. It is easy to argue that those times were as dynamic as those we face today,” Wilenius said.

“Business like, but approachable, conservative, yet progressive; attributes that served him, and Northern Electric Cooperative, very well,” Wilenius said.

Johnson retired after 14 years at Northern Electric in September 1976 and spent the next 10 years in Rapid City, SD. He currently resides in Clear Lake, SD.

*Northern Electric Cooperative Association was one of three cooperatives that consolidated to become Lake Country Power on Jan. 1, 1997.

Virgil T. Hanlon

Recognized nationally as a leader in the initiation and development of many of the consumer-owned power supply organizations in the Missouri River Basin, Virgil T. Hanlon was a key organizer of East River in 1950 and Basin Electric in 1961.

He also helped to organize Mid-West Electric Consumers Association (MECA), the legislative organization of the consumer-owned electric utilities of the Midwest, and the Missouri Basin Systems Group, the planning and pooling organization for the consumer-owned electric systems of the region.* He was also involved in creating Heartland Consumers Power District.

Hanlon was active in South Dakota, regional and national consumer-owned power supply efforts as well as in numerous conservation and other rural development programs. He served on many regional and national committees and received numerous awards for his contributions, including MECA’s John Carmody Award.

A native of Emery, SD, Hanlon was born Feb. 18, 1910. He received a B.S. degree in economics and education in 1933 from Northern State College, Aberdeen, SD, and did graduate work at the universities of Minnesota, Iowa and Idaho. Following a period of high school teaching and coaching from 1933 to 1939, he was appointed office manager and later manager of Lincoln Union Electric, Alcester, SD. He served as general manager of East River since its organization in 1950 until his death on May 19, 1969.

During World War II Hanlon held the rank of lieutenant, serving in the Pacific Theater as a gunnery officer in the Navy.

Included below are excerpts of a statement Basin Electric’s first general manager James Grahl made upon learning of Hanlon’s death of a heart attack at age 59.

“The people of the Missouri River Basin have lost a true friend and an invaluable champion of their interests. There is no way to measure the great contributions Mr. Hanlon made to the people and the region he loved; he was an energetic and tenacious battler for low-cost power for rural people; he was an activist who strived for the optimum development of water and electric power resources of this region; he was nationally recognized as a great leader in rural electrification. His close associates will always remember him as a forceful yet gentle human being, who constantly called forth their best performance…”

"The Directors and employees of Basin Electric will deeply miss Virgil Hanlon's wise counsel, his fierce loyalty, and his friendship. We honor his dedication to democratic principles and his dream that the people would be the major beneficiaries of a developing and prosperous region."

Hanlon’s wife Edna was also a Basin Electric incorporator.

*MBSG and MECA merged on Jan. 1, 1999.