From left: TVPPA Chairman Greg Williams, Rowland, TVPPA President/CEO Jack Simmons
Former TVPPA Chairman Ronny Rowland and Jeff Newman, general manager at Forked Deer EC, Halls, TN, were formally welcomed to the TVPPA Board of Directors at that body’s March 20 meeting in Chattanooga, TN.
It’s familiar ground for Rowland, who served as TVPPA’s chairman in 2000-01. The longtime manager at Prentiss Co. EPA, Booneville, MS, was elected Jan. 27 by his Mississippi District colleagues to represent that body’s cooperatives on the TVPPA board. He succeeds another former TVPPA Chairman, Wayne Henson, who retired in January from East Mississippi EPA, Meridian, MS.
Rowland was awarded TVPPA’s highest honor, the Distinguished Service Award, in 2003. He would mark 46 years at Prentiss Co. EPA on May 31 and has been that cooperative’s chief executive since 1982.
From left: TVPPA Chairman Greg Williams, Newman, TVPPA President/CEO Jack Simmons
Newman was elected by his Western District peers to succeed Kevin Murphy of Southwest Tennessee EMC, Brownsville, TN, in representing that group’s cooperatives on the TVPPA board. Murphy stepped away from that post at the end of 2016.
Newman, who took over at Forked Deer EC when Harold Willis retired in January 2015, studied electrical engineering at the University of Tennessee-Martin. He started at Forked Deer EC on a co-op basis in 1991, going on to posts in right-of-way and line work before becoming the cooperative’s engineering coordinator in 2000.