For those of you who missed our annual Spring luncheon meeting, Kimberly (Kim) Greene , former President and CEO of Southern Company Services, who was recently appointed Chief Operating Officer and Executive V.P. of Southern Company gave us an overview of  the issues and challenges currently facing the Southern Company. Many of our retirees have some investments dependent on the performance of our company and I encourage you to take every opportunity to listen and ask question of our company leaders.

I would like to thank Glenda James and the Arrangements Committee for organizing a great venue for our meeting, excellent food and the many little details necessary to have a luncheon of that magnitude. We were all impressed with the quality of the program and a great big thank you is extended to Jackie Imbusch and her Program Committee for untiring efforts to arrange for Kim Greene to be the keynote speaker

I encourage you to check out our web site at www.scsretirees.com to see the latest news of our organization. I think you will agree that Cary Campbell provides us with a professional grade web site with a good amount of information and news. We owe him a great deal of gratitude for his efforts and commitment to SCS/SNC Retirees.

Please join us on July 14, 2014, Room 130 Building 42 at SCS Inverness at 1:00 PM for our next meeting.  Our featured guest speaker will be Brian Whitley, Regulatory Affairs Director at Southern Nuclear. This is a great opportunity to get an update and ask any questions you may have on the design and construction of Vogtle Units 3 and 4.

With best wishes for a happy and safe Summer.

H. Ray Bailey

President, SCS/SNC Retirees Association

Our annual Spring luncheon meeting was held on Monday, May 5, 2014 at the Pelham Civic Center.  Our featured guest speaker was Kimberly (Kim) Greene, former President and CEO of Southern Company Services who was recently appointed Chief Operating Officer and Executive V.P. of Southern Company. In her new position, she is responsible for the Southern system’s operations, including generation, transmission, engineering and construction services, research and environmental affairs, as well as Southern Power and Southern Wholesale Energy.

Kim shared her experience with us spanning from her education in engineering science & mechanics at the Univ. of Tenn, Knoxville  to advanced degrees in biomedical engineering at UAB and Business Administration at Samford University.  Kim Green’s biography reads like a “Who’s Who of Young Executives” already on the rise.  She’s a wife to a Southern Company pilot and mother of two children who has deep family roots in Knoxville, Tennessee but calls Birmingham her professional home.  Kim chose to begin her career with SCS-Birmingham in engineering, advancing through operations and finance.  During eight years at Southern Energy, Inc. she progressed in finance, structuring, trading and asset management.

In 2007 Kim was offered and accepted the CFO and Chief Risk Officer position with TVA in Knoxville.  This was a tough professional decision, but Kim placed a higher priority on her family’s happiness and well-being than her own.  After about 5 years with TVA she decided to return to her professional home.  Kim’s time with Southern was positive because of the high caliber and character of employees she worked with, and she enthusiastically remembered several of them in the audience.

From Kim’s tour of TVA’s unfinished Bellefonte Plant, to the new technology plants Southern Company is building in Kemper Co. Mississippi and Augusta, Georgia–each illustrated the history and future of of electric energy production in America.  One is where cost overruns and adaptations to government regulations caused other utilities to back down before completion of new plants–later to wish they had gone ahead and completed them.   The other is where Southern has the foresight, perseverance, and skill to push difficult projects to completion.

Kim covered details from the generation mix, fuel prices, advances in wind power, and stock prices (the year to date trend for Southern stock was higher than the S&P and the DOW).   She also shared some photos of Vogtle’s Unit 3 & 4 progress in Waynesboro, Georgia.

We all enjoyed Kim’s presentation and are proud to have such leadership in charge of the company.

The food was great too!

Happy Spring everyone!  I think we are all glad to say goodbye to the chilly and snowy Southern winter of 2013/2014.   I hope you had the chance to read our March “Outside” newsletter, but in case you missed it, our “Spotlight” section featured Mr. Robert (Bob) Hart, who was one of the original founders of our SCS/SNC Retirees organization.  Mr. Hart had an interesting and successful career at Alabama Power and Southern Company Services.  The article is posted at www.scsretirees.com.   The May newsletter “Spotlight” will showcase Jay Dorrance so be sure check out this article.

With best wishes for a happy and healthy Spring-

H. Ray Bailey

President, SCS/SNC Retirees Association

For those of you who missed our March meeting, Horace Waugh of the Alabama Power Energizers presented a travel program with an overview of upcoming trips offered by the Energizers.  He featured a trip for this coming August to the Elbe River (Germany and the Czech Republic).   There are many other trips available for SCS Retirees to consider. Several  of our members who have traveled with the Energizers spoke to the quality and wonderful accommodations of the trips. Feel free to contact Horace Waugh at 205-243-7720 or energizerstvl@gmail.com for further trip information or to sign up for a trip of a lifetime.

SPOTLIGHT ON BOB HART

Samuel Robert Hart Jr. (Bob) began his career with Alabama Power Company as a Junior Engineer in July 1949 one month after graduating from the University of Alabama with a BS in Electrical Engineering. He remained with the Southern Company System until his retirement in 1986 as the Vice President of Research and Environmental Affairs at Southern Company Services.

Bob was born in Birmingham in May 1927 and graduated from Ensley High School in the midst of World War II. After a stint in the US Army he returned to marry his high school sweetheart Corinne Donnelly in 1947. Bob held various positions within the Southern Company system such as Assistant to the President of Alabama Power (1963), Vice President of Engineering at APC (1967) and Vice President of Transmission and System Operations for APC in 1975. In June 1977 he moved over to SCS and became the Vice President of R&EA.

One of Bob and Corinne’s most memorable assignments during his 37 year career was in 1954 and 1955 when they lived and worked in Schenectady, New York and Bob completed the General Electric Power Engineering Course which was like a master’s degree for those in the power engineering field at that time. It was there that Bob and Corinne met other industry folks like Frank and Francis Stuart from Dallas, Texas. Frank had a long career with Dallas Power and Light and they remained friends throughout the years visiting one another until Frank’s death in 2013.

Outside of the Southern Company, Bob devoted many hours to community service and received the Vulcan Award from the Boy Scouts of American in 1966 for his outstanding work in Scouting and also received the Bomar Award in 1959 for his outstanding service to the Birmingham Area Jaycees. As anyone who is around Bob Hart for any length of time will learn, he loves the University of Alabama School of Engineering and is a huge fan of Alabama Football. From 1972 to 1975, Bob helped found and Chair the UA Capstone Engineering Society, a national organization for alumni and friends of the College of Engineering to provide industry guidance and fundraising for the College. In 1979 and in 2002, he was given the Outstanding Engineering Alumnus Award by the University of Alabama. In the past few years, Bob continues to show his support for the UA College of Engineering through a recently endowed Engineering scholarship.

Bob has two grown children Gary (Marcia) and Lisa Hart Reynolds (Preston) and three of the most wonderful grandchildren in the world. They are: Leigh Hart (30); Ashley Reynolds Nail (28) and Leslie Reynolds (25). All three are graduates of the University of Alabama. They all reside in the Birmingham area and are the delight of their grandparents. In 1967 Bob secured one of the Alabama Power “lease lots” on Lay Lake (back when the lake level was raised) and there the family constructed a modest lake house that served as the base for many hours of family fun over the years.

Upon retirement, Bob and Corinne traveled to Europe and took a number of cruises and today they have now “downsized” from their house in Vestavia and live in an apartment near Vestavia High School. They remain active in Shades Mountain Baptist Church and now await a second grandchild’s wedding as their oldest grandchild Leigh is to be married in June 2014.