The new general manager at Arab Electric Cooperative was immediately thrown into the storm so to speak.
Stacey White of Arab signed her contract at 1 p.m. Friday then spent all day Saturday and Sunday dealing with the aftermath of the tornadoes and thunderstorms that swept through the area.
AEC had about 2,000 customers without power Saturday. By Sunday, most were back on and, by Monday morning, all that could have power, did have power.
White, the daughter of a longtime electrical lineman, was appointed general manger about 7 p.m. Thursday following an all-day meeting of the AEC board of trustees.
She was given a one-year contract, which will be evaluated at the end of the year.
The board interviewed the top three candidates at 9 a.m., 1 p.m. and 4 p.m. Thursday (they didn’t use the full three hours each). The board then met to discuss the candidates.
Following a nearly three-hour meeting, the board voted 8-0 to offer the position to White (the board president doesn’t vote unless there’s a tie).
White was named the executive in charge at Arab Electric Cooperative in August after former GM Scott Spence resigned to take a similar position in Tennessee. She has been at AEC more than 10 years.
White is only the second female general manager in the state of Alabama, after Baldwin County’s general manager, who was hired in 2015.
Before becoming the general manager and executive-in-charge at AEC, White was part of the management team. Prior to that she was the human resource manager and was in customer service at AEC.
White is a native of Guntersville. Her father, Ray Sorter, was a lineman for Guntersville Electric.
She and her husband, Tim White, a retired Alabama state trooper, have been married 29 years. They have three children. Daughter Katie Beth is a registered nurse at Marshall Medical Center North, daughter Savannah is in nursing school at Wallace State Community College and son Colby is majoring in building construction at Wallace State.
The family attends Union Chapel Methodist Church.
The other two candidates for the job were:
• Marshall Cherry, chief operating officer at Roanoke Electric Cooperative in Aulander, North Carolina.
REC is similar to AEC in size, with 14,500 members in parts of Bertie, Halifax, Hertford, Northampton, Gates, Perquimans and Chowan counties.
• Allan Glidewell, the PE manager of the Birmingham and Chattanooga offices of Fisher and Arnold, a leading engineering, architecture, and consulting firm in the United States, with emphasis in many areas including electricity, transportation, land development, water, oil and gas and more.
Arab Electric has contracted with Fisher and Arnold to build its new substation.
Note. Tribune editor Charles Whisenant is a member of the Arab Electric Cooperative board of trustees.
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