In the summer of 1982, a soon-to-be constructed power plant in Hallsville, Texas, offered the promise of opportunity for 30 young men eager to make their mark in the world.
These young men joined Southwestern Electric Power Co. as apprentice machinists for the H.W. Pirkey Power Plant. Their job entailed repairing and maintaining plant equipment and structures, a trade they learned together as Pirkey was built.
The experience bonded them, and they quickly came to rely on each other for advice, assistance, and encouragement. More than 40 years later, 12 of these original 30 apprentices will be on hand for the plant’s final operation on March 31, 2023.
“We’ve had a lot of fun and challenging times together,” said Brent Ogden, now the plant’s maintenance superintendent. “We’re one big family, and I know we’ll continue to be lifelong friends even after the plant closes.”
Ogden, who transferred in 2010 to Turk Power Plant in Fulton, Ark., planned to retire in March 2022 but reconsidered when he was offered the chance to return to Pirkey for its final year of operation.
“There were several reasons I chose to come back,” he said. “But a big part of it was being with the guys I started with when the plant shuts down.”
Maintenance employees Ben Craig and Dale Haney work on an ID fan wreck in 2002.
Franklin’s Follies
In the early days, the group came to be known as Franklin’s Follies, a nod to their supervisor and later SWEPCO’s VP of Generation Paul Franklin, who guided their training and first steps in the industry.
“That’s what everyone labeled us because he had to raise a bunch of kids,” Ogden said with a laugh. “I was the oldest at 22.”
Some had heard about the job through family friends while others learned about it in trade classes.
“I was in a class learning how to do industrial electrical wiring when a counselor came in and told us SWEPCO wanted to hire 30 people to send to college to be machinists,” said Wade Hicks, a station machinist C. “I’d never stepped foot in a machine shop, but it sounded like something that could be a lifelong career.”
Their first two years on the job were spent in the classroom. The apprentices had on-the-job instruction at a training building on the plant site, as well as machine shop classes at Kilgore College, where they learned drafting and technical physics, among other things.
“We were required to maintain an 85 average in all our classes,” Maintenance Supervisor Ben Craig said. “In the summer, we would tear apart old gas plant pumps and check clearances and learn how to do maintenance on them.”
That knowledge transferred to the plant in the fall of 1984 when they began to test the new equipment.
“It was exciting knowing that we were putting this thing online,” Ogden said. “We didn’t know what to expect. At first it was overwhelming to see all this big equipment and know we were going to have to maintain it. But the more we worked on it, the more it became a challenge we took pride in.”
Working together
From the front left, counterclockwise: Maintenance Supervisor Ricky Morris, Station Machinist C Wade Hicks, Station Machinist C Larry Garrison, Energy Production Supervisor Brad Epperson, Maintenance Superintendent Brent Ogden, Maintenance Supervisor Ben Craig, Lignite Equipment Operator Lance Scudday and Welder Machinist Tomy Rushing.
One of the most memorable of those challenges was the time they repaired a low-pressure (LP) rotor on the steam turbine a few months after the plant began commercial operation.
“We immediately went into doing something that had been planned for the annual warranty inspection,” Craig said. “It was a scramble to get it done, but we were ready.”
He said the thing that made the experience so exciting was that the LP rotor – which rotates the turbine blades – had been off limits during their training days.
“Everyone was eager to tear into this thing because we couldn’t even get near it before,” he said.
Maintenance Supervisor Ricky Morris said they learned a lot from that repair, and it was an experience that helped them navigate future maintenance on LP rotors.
“We got where we could probably pull those blades off with our eyes closed,” he said.
But for Morris, the best memories occurred in the boiler.
He said a tube leak in the boiler could cause quite a bit of damage as it wasn’t detected until an operator heard it.
“Today, we’ve got acoustic monitoring systems that picks those up really quick, but back then, we relied on operators to hear them,” he said. “By the time, you got in there, it was a pretty good size wreck, and we’d be in there for a week. It was hard work, but you’d carry on conversations, and we made a lot of good memories inside the boiler.”
Closing a chapter
Throughout the years, these men saw a lot of changes in not just plant maintenance but their own lives.
They started families, gained promotions, and celebrated milestones together over the years.
“Now, we’re the old dogs around the yard,” Craig said. “Not a day goes by that someone comes up with a question, and we say go ask Larry (Garrison), Keith (Bynum) or Ronnie (McBride). SWEPCO did a good a job of hiring good people. Looking back and knowing what we achieved together, it’s remarkable.”
THE PIRKEY DOZEN
Twelve apprentice machinists hired in 1982 who still work at Pirkey Power Plant.
- RICHARD ALLEE, FGD senior operator
- KEITH BYNUM, welder machinist
- BEN CRAIG, maintenance supervisor
- BRAD EPPERSON, energy production supervisor
- LARRY GARRISON, station machinist C
- WADE HICKS, station machinist C
- RONNIE MCBRIDE, station machinist C
- RICKY MORRIS, maintenance supervisor
- BRENT OGDEN, maintenance superintendent
- TOMY RUSHING, welder machinist
- LANCE SCUDDAY, lignite equipment operator
- MACK TIMMONS, energy production supervisor