Happy Retirement, Jim!

Jim Lewis polished off a 34-year career in the utility industry on January 3.  Jim has been a journeyman lineman, and a loss control and safety instructor for five different utility organizations.

Jim says, “It is time for some new blood, but I have no regrets and I have enjoyed my career.”

As director of loss control and safety services for Grand Canyon State Electric Cooperative Association, Jim has seen one of his major duties really blossom. The GCSECA line school held annually in early October provides line workers for electric cooperatives and other public power utilities, like municipal and electrical district utilities, has grown immensely in his eleven years of oversight.

“I am really proud of being able to add the lineman rodeo component to the school several years ago. The rodeo competition means the guys really try to learn new things and then they perform them in timed events. But, we stress safety and proper completion over how quick they do their work,” notes Lewis. He says the participants’ time only matter in ties.

Lewis started his career in 1977 as a lineman for Ark Valley Electric Cooperative in Hutchinson, Kansas. After eleven years, he then worked for Federated Rural Electric Insurance Corporation of Lenexa, Kansas as a loss control consultant. Four years later, we went to work for the Kansas Electric Cooperative Association in Topeka as an instructor for their loss control program providing training to the 32 electric cooperatives across the state.

Jim’s next career stop put him in South Dakota in 1992 when he went to work for the state’s electric cooperative association in Pierre as a safety instructor. In 1998, he assumed the director duties over the safety program there. The warmer weather in Arizona brought him in late 2000 to work in the same capacity for GCSECA, headquartered in Phoenix. 

Jim holds a number of “certified” instructor titles and has been a longtime member of the National Utilities Training and Safety Association. In 2008, he led GCSECA’s efforts to become the second electric cooperative statewide association in the country to achieve safety certification.

Jim reflected, “I take a certain sense in pride in knowing the things I have taught over the years may well be the reason some of the co-op workers have gone home in one piece to their families.”