“They are in Tennessee and have a lot of dams”. That was the extent of Kenneth’s knowledge of the TVA when he got the call. And the rest, as they say, is history.
And I screwed up. Big time.
Kenneth was one of the first to submit his story to me. When I was still trying to work things out on this site (and in particular this page), I mistakenly deleted most of what he sent. I felt like crap going back to Kenneth and letting him know what I had done and asked him to please rewrite it. He said that was okay. But it was not okay with me because his story was very heartfelt and sincere. I begged him a few times to please redo it and he would repeately tell me not to worry about it.
About a month had passed and earlier this week he wanted to know how he could send it to me and I gave him my email address. This morning, he let me know thru facebook to check my email.
Kenneth, I cannot tell you how happy I am that you rewrote this piece for our classmates, friends and families to read and appreciate. From the bottom of my heart, I offer a very sincere Thank You!
Here is Kenneth’s story – in his own words.
After graduating from Princeton High School, I attended Bluefield State College. In the spring of 1976, I was in the Student Union playing ping-pong when the Placement Dean (Dean Moore) called the attendant inquiring if I was there and she needed to talk with me. The conversation revolved around the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) wanting to interview me today. I explained I was in a sweat shirt and in no manner was dressed for a formal meeting. She said for me to come on, they wanted to talk to me now. So here I go into a room with a large oak table and a fellow in a business suit. He introduced himself and asked me what I knew about TVA. I replied “They are in Tennessee and have a lot of dams”. That was in March of 1976. I didn’t expect to hear anything from that meeting and knew I didn’t want to get in the mining field, so I was planning on joining the Air Force. Well one evening in April, while me and my dad were out doing some electrical work, my mother took a phone call from TVA asking that I call them back as soon as possible. I graduated from Bluefield State on May 9th and started my career with TVA on May 12th at the Sequoyah Nuclear Power Plant.
On June 12th of 1976, I married my childhood sweetheart Rhonda Faye Anderson on Belcher Mountain Old Regular Baptist Church and drove back to Red Bank (a little town surrounded by Chattanooga) that evening in our Pinto. We lived in Williamsburg Apartments until 1979 when we bought our house. We tried for many years to have a family of our own, but it just wasn’t meant to be. We went thru all of the known infertility treatments over the years, and Rhonda had multiple surgeries and we did get pregnant once, but lost the baby early in the pregnancy. So, we just love our God-Daughters and Son and couldn’t be any prouder of how they have turned out hoping we had a little influence.
While this was going on, I was furthering my education with TVA and wanted to try to get closer back home as six hours seemed such a long way to drive. TVA was building seven nuclear sites and one was Phipps Bend located near Kingsport, Tennessee. As the construction of Sequoyah (SQN) was coming to a close, TVA asked me to pick the three sites I wanted to work at. Well of course number one was Phipps Bend, then Hartsville (close to Nashville), and last was Watts Bar (Spring City (50 miles north of our house) So in 1981, I started at Watts Bar (WBN). I was also assigned the responsibility for the Fire Detection and Security systems for the site. I bounced between WBN and SQN until 1986 when I was permanently assigned to the Modifications Organization at SQN.
I have truly been blessed with making good decisions regarding my career as TVA stopped construction on the other sites. In 1990, I interviewed for a position as a System Engineer at SQN and moved into that position. Bet you can’t guess what systems I had??????? If you said Security and Fire detection your right! I stayed in Systems until 1997 and achieved the classification as a Senior System Engineer Specialist. TVA loves to reorganize, so I was offered a position in SQN Operations in the Fire Operations Department and took Security and Fire Detection with me as system responsibility. There I stayed until 2008 and then became a Program Manager for the Fleet over Nuclear Security System at TVA’s Corporate Office. So now I was responsible for the operation of the Security Systems at all three nuclear sites. Still had Fire Detection, but was teaching younger engineers about its quirks.
I retired in 2014 from TVA, but went back in 2018 as a Consultant on the Fire Detection upgrade for SQN. Retired again in 2021.
Rhonda and I are traveling as much as we can either on our Goldwing, cruise ship, or by plane just recently returning from Scotland.