Interview with Brian Crutchfield, July 23, 2020

MUMMERT: The following is an oral history interview conducted as part of the Tennessee Valley Authority Retirees Association Oral History Project. The person being interviewed is Brian Crutchfield.[1] Mr. Crutchfield is a retiree of the Tennessee Valley Authority. He worked at the TVA for nine and one-half years between December 1978 and May 1988. He is being interviewed by Philip Mummert as part of the Oral History Project. The interview is being conducted via telephone and Mr. Crutchfield is at his residence in Boone, North Carolina. Today is Thursday, July 23rd, 2020, and the interview is now beginning. Well, Brian, hello. Thank you very much for participating in this. I'm going to begin by asking you to tell me what the 00:01:00circumstances were that led your getting, led to your getting a job at TVA?

CRUTCHFIELD: Prior to working at TVA, I was a regional field representative for the Appalachian BioRegion for the National Center for Appropriate Technology out of Butte, Montana, that had been established by Senator Mike Mansfield. And our purpose was to introduce and help develop appropriate technologies in communities throughout that region. And I had the opportunity to make presentations and explain what appropriate technology was, as well as provide small grants to communities. And on a couple of occasions, I was in the East Tennessee area and we provided some funds to the Highlander Center to put in a solar greenhouse. And it was at that time that I was introduced to 00:02:00some TVA people who were working with us on that project, and they felt like appropriate technology was something that they should be embracing. And they said they were going to set up a position in appropriate technology and asked if I would be interested in applying. And, of course, I was honored to do so and received the job and, and started in December of 1978.

MUMMERT: So I would guess I better ask you, what is appropriate technology?

CRUTCHFIELD: Well, at the time, it was based on some work done by E. F. Schumacher in England saying that small is beautiful and that we should be doing things to fit the scale of what communities need. A lot of work was being done in India and other locations where village technology and other types 00:03:00of technologies sometimes didn't fit the situation. Where we might send over a complicated tractor for agricultural use in a small village in India, and within a few months it might break down and there was no way that they could fix it. Whereas if we sent some other simpler technology that was partial human power and mechanical power, they would have the ability to not only fix it, reproduce it, and spread the use of it, and meet the needs of that community. So appropriate technology was sort of a predecessor word or phrase for the current word "sustainable development," meaning that you're trying to look at things from a, a whole systems perspective. Community resource analysis of what do we have here and what can we use most effectively. And, of course, 00:04:00that's sort of the history of the Tennessee Valley Authority being established to be a national demonstration agency and, at the same time, to do things of importance that might be able to be used by other people across the country. A lot of countries in the world were actually visiting the TVA in the 1970s and 1980s, in particular, because a lot of countries, because of their boundaries, are basically set up on a natural resource type facility. You know, river boundaries on one side and mountain boundaries, ocean, etc., so that their geography and area was really defined by their natural resources and what was there in that country. And since TVA is somewhat that area because we always refer to it as "the Valley," it was the same type of thing. They wanted to see how we were doing that. That we weren't just building dams, we 00:05:00were building dams for, in the early years, for flood control and for agricultural benefit. And then that became power. And then once you made power, you needed to have industry and businesses that could use that power. And you needed to do training and other things. You didn't want agricultural waste to runoff to get into the rivers and lakes, and dam up those dams that were constructed. So it was a total integrated resource analysis type of concept, which is the same as appropriate technology or now sustainable development. How do we sustain what we're doing and not have to come back 50 years from now and have to replace it.

MUMMERT: It might--

CRUTCHFIELD: So it made a lot of sense to work at TVA.

MUMMERT: I can, I can see how, as you indicated, appropriate technology might be useful or relevant for developing countries. But why was 00:06:00there a need or importance for it in the United States and in the TVA or Tennessee Valley in a developed country?

CRUTCHFIELD: Well, certain areas of the Valley still were underdeveloped, by any sense of the word, especially along the river and the mountains. You know the Appalachian Regional Commission had sort of a similar type of mandate looking at a particular region that may be underdeveloped. And, you know, TVA brought in the resource development of building dams, introducing new agricultural concepts in the poorer counties. You know, certainly, areas like Knoxville, Chattanooga, Nashville, Memphis, they developed pretty much on their own because 00:07:00of the benefit of having larger populations and, especially during the war, a lot of things could take place then and grow much more rapidly. But when you get out into the smaller communities of counties under 30,000 population, they need all the help they can get to get started. And sustainable development, leadership development, all those types of things that help people learn and try to put things together as opposed to find a single solution that there are multiple solutions to a community to make it last and survive and grow, and be of benefit to the community as a whole, creating jobs and providing tax base. So when you look at the smaller communities, even when you do maybe a single project, it takes a long time for that project to have the long-term 00:08:00benefits that you're after. And so there were a lot of counties out there among the 200 that needed assistance, not just the big ones.

MUMMERT: So here comes Brian Crutchfield being hired at TVA in 1978 as the first person to specialize in, in this area. What did you do?

CRUTCHFIELD: Well, a lot of it we were, folks who were focusing on how does TVA tell its story for the upcoming 1982 World's Fair? And how do we show what integrated resource management is all about? And why would we want to build a permanent pavilion? Maybe we should do something different. So in the first three years there, a lot was focused on, we were thinking about doing an appropriate technology village with wind energy and solar energy and 00:09:00sustainable agriculture on the other side of the river and having something like a steam or electric railroad take folks across to see it over on the other side, so it could be a permanent facility. That plan didn't work out, but we ultimately got into retrofitting two barges that had been used to haul coal up and down the river to various TVA plants. We retrofitted those and put exhibit space on them that told the history of TVA, that talked about how do you manage these dams for both energy and flood protection, and industrial development. And then, you know, what type of things we did with agricultural development and new fertilizers and how they should be used, and different farming 00:10:00techniques, and then when we had excess electricity, what type of companies could we recruit in that would create jobs and provide benefits to communities over a longer period of time. So those barges were, were great for that. And we were able to get that done in 1982, and then in 1983, which was the 50th anniversary of TVA, so we took those barges up and down the river and stopped at a lot of the TVA communities that had grown as a result of TVA. And actually, those barges were manned by the Bicentennial Volunteers, Inc., BVI, which is the predecessor, I guess, to the TVA Retirees Association. And those people manned it; they took people on tours. So the people that may not have come 00:11:00to the World's Fair in 1982 could have those same exhibits in their communities down on their waterfront and do presentations. And it was, you know, it was just a great time there. Everybody was really feeling at 50 years that TVA had done their job and really was a national demonstration agency and also a resource from an international perspective as well. So we were having visitors come in from, from all over the country,[2] so I know a lot of my time was spent in those first three years with people coming in and wanting to sit down and find out about TVA and, and how can we do something similar in our new developing country, whether it was somewhere in Indonesia or Africa or South America. And, you know, it was very exciting because they thought TVA 00:12:00was the best thing America had ever done and that it was done by the government. And, and, you know, nowadays here in the 2020s, everybody refers to socialism as sort of a bad word, but in reality, TVA was really sort of the largest socialist-type experiment ever conducted by the U.S. government and it was a success. It showed that you really could do something out there that could benefit communities and areas. And it was an exciting time to be there. Dave Freeman was Chairman of TVA at that time and he was certainly progressive. And the Board at TVA, the 3-person Board at that time, they were a lot like the Board from the 1930s. The 1933 Board was Arthur Morgan and David Lilienthal and, and others that had a real sense of what TVA could do with the 00:13:00creation of the town of Norris, the building and construction of Norris Dam, other dams that were being built in the 1930s in preparation, I guess you could say, for World War II, knowing that we were going to need a lot of electricity and resources that could support a industrial complex associated with a major world war. So it was an exciting time to be there and we were all at the 50-year mark looking a lot at what happened at TVA 50 years ago? How far have we gone away from our mission? Are we still focused on that same mission? And what can we do to realign ourselves with the next 50 years? And it was very 00:14:00exciting to look at some of that. I know we did a community energy management project in Norris, Tennessee. And it was great because the community is still very small and still had a lot of TVA, TVA workers and retirees that lived there after 50 years. And yet at the same time, you know, they were distant from, just far enough from Knoxville that there wasn't a whole lot of job creation and development out in the Norris community. It was more a bedroom commuter industry [community] in, in 1983. But it was a great time to be there. I mean, everybody was real excited. Everybody wanted to do something. Everybody was embracing the concept that we are a national demonstration agency and everything you do should be of importance to, not just that one community, but a model for 00:15:00others to emulate. And as long as the project you were working on was very specific to doing that and could be replicated, so we were asked to keep very good records on what we were doing, you could get approval. The thing that they did tell you, though, is that, you know, we're here to do demonstration projects, not necessarily to create a program that has to be funded and maintained and expanded year after year after year. So you might do a great community or economic development project, but as long as you only did it one time, in terms of funding and resources and analysis, then you were okay.

MUMMERT: Say, I, you've been talking about the first couple of years and you were in that position of focusing on appropriate technology. And I 00:16:00wondered if you could give us a, a thumbnail sketch of your entire career at TVA without going into any great depth.

CRUTCHFIELD: Sure.

MUMMERT: And then we'll go through your career in a bit more detail.

CRUTCHFIELD: Okay.

MUMMERT: But after Appropriate Technology, what did you do? I know you had a couple of different careers.

CRUTCHFIELD: I did. And, you know, I think one aspect of TVA that was both creative and, to a certain extent awkward, was they were always trying to change and do something for the better. And as a result, that included a lot of reorganizations. When I first went there, I was hired in the Office 00:17:00of Tributary Area Development, that focused on the various tributaries [tributary areas] of the Tennessee Valley that flowed into the Tennessee River. And they were looked at and examined from the perspective of what does this particular watershed do? And how can we work within it to, you know, improve that particular watershed or tributary area? And probably within less than a year, that group, we were reorganized. And it seemed like always around Labor Day each year, we got a reorganization [mandate]. And I know over almost 10 years, we reorganized five different major times in the Economic and Community Development and Natural Resource area. Not as much in the Power area, but certainly in what we would call the appropriated side of the agency. 00:18:00And so, within a year, I went from being an appropriate technology specialist, somewhat doing my own thing, to being a Branch Chief of the Community Energy Branch. And this was right around the time too of Three Mile Island,[3] so all of a sudden there was a major new focus somewhat away from nuclear energy and, and construction to what are the alternatives in renewable energy and solar energy and wind energy. And TVA was a real leader in that. And it made a significant difference not only to TVA, but to other utilities around the country that you're looking at how can you create energy that doesn't have long-term environmental impact that has to be dealt with. How can you create net-zero energy, and that was pretty radical 00:19:00thinking for the early 1980s and TVA was a leader in that. So the Community Energy Branch I led focused on looking at a community from an energy perspective. Where does its energy come from? How do you manage it? How do we make sure that they are being well served for the future? Do they have any energy resources locally that could be used, like small hydro, micro hydro, wind resources, solar energy? And TVA, in the Power side, was doing a lot of demonstrations in that and, of course, they were also focusing on conservation, which is what you always do first before you try to develop new energy resources. So conservation, wood energy, wind energy, TVA was really 00:20:00a national leader in all those areas before other utilities or even the Federal government was into it at a significant level. And I think a lot of that came from Dave Freeman, who had headed up an energy policy council prior to coming to TVA, so he had a good sense of what are the things you can do. And, of course, we had folks like Amory Lovins[4] come in and talk to us and tell us what kind of things were going on around the globe and what we should be addressing as well. And that was also a time in which we started to reduce the scale and operation of our nuclear construction program and, and our work force. I think at the time that I arrived in 1979, we had close to 17 or 18 nuclear power plants under construction. And within, oh, three to five years, we were down to, I guess, 8, 9, 10, or 11 plants, with 8 or 9 plants 00:21:00decommissioned and deferred. And we went from 50,000 employees to almost 30,000 employees and I presume since then that it's even less. But it was a radical change for the TVA. You know, when I look back on it now and I look at all these changes that came from deregulation of electricity, you know, it could be, it could've gone either way. TVA could've gone where they did build all those nuclear plants back in the 1970s and 80s and put them on line and then they could've been the center of a major transmission network that, that served the entire country. More, sort of like what we were saying, a true 00:22:00socialist-type situation where a centralized government utility provides all the, produces all the electricity as efficiently as it can and then distributes it and sells it to private power companies across the whole nation and is responsible for a very creative and well run transmission system. That was one of the things we talked about, I guess, maybe 10 years ago when deregulation of utilities was being touted as what we need to be doing. And, of course, since then, it sort of moved past that back to decentralized energy and renewable energy and appropriate technology and sustainable development. It keeps sort of going in circles, but the reality, I think, is we're all headed in the right direction now. But I always think there will be a need for a certain amount of centralized power, but I think now that we have the technologies out 00:23:00there for photovoltaic and battery power and electric vehicles, we're going to see a lot more decentralized power than we've ever had. And I know TVA is a leader in that in electric vehicles and other types of things and, you know, I think back at people I worked with in the Solar Energy Branch and other alternative energy areas at TVA and hydroelectric. A lot of those folks left TVA at one time and went to other areas around the country and ended up developing, you know, major programs in wind and solar and hydro, and TVA, having, you know, a secondary effect on our country simply by the people who worked at TVA now being spread across the globe.

MUMMERT: Yes, that's interesting. So after, after you were in the 00:24:00Community Energy Branch, you went on to Community Development I believe?

CRUTCHFIELD: I did. You know, another reorganization. TVA was good about not letting people, even when they reorganized, they would say, "Now we're going to focus on this for a while. And we need to focus on community development, things like housing, and how do we assist our minority communities? And how do we create jobs out there in places that need it the most? And so, I was a community development specialist working in areas of affordable housing. We did some housing that was energy efficient in a community land trust, where all the houses were, all the land was owned by the land trust, but the houses were owned by the individuals. We did that up in the Jellico area, just across 00:25:00the Tennessee border in Kentucky, an old strip mining area that had very little economic development and had been basically used up. We also did a minority economic development project right there in Knoxville where we took over the old Mechanicsville High School, really within a rock throw of the TVA Towers Headquarters, on the other side of the interstate. And we took this old high school, renovated it, put small businesses in there, created a business incubator providing technical assistance and resources and financial assistance to small businesses that could locate there and grow with good assistance. And, you know, to do that in a minority area with TVA really focusing 00:26:00in on how they could work with those communities in particular, and include the local leadership in the development of these projects and let them be the managers and facilitators, that was fairly novel there in Knoxville at the time. And similar things were going on in Nashville and Chattanooga and Memphis and the other urban areas where there were substantial minority populations. And so, in that community development vein, again, lots of creative, novel things that weren't being done in other parts of the country, but could be done there at TVA because of the unique partnership and funding that could be provided.

MUMMERT: And then after Community Development, you had, you went to, 00:27:00from what I know, Waste Management.

CRUTCHFIELD: Yes. There was a big focus on natural resource development and how to do creative things in other problem areas. And people need to realize that, you know, EPA [Environmental Protection Agency] didn't really get started until 1976. So by 10 years later, people were saying, you know, it used to be that everybody, every little county could have their own landfill or back then it was called the county dump. And it might be something as simple as digging a trench or a ditch out in a field and throwing your trash in it, and every few weeks you might cover it with dirt. And for small communities, that may have worked at the time. Lots of interesting stories of people who will say, "Yes, we used to go out there and shoot rats and stray dogs and things like that at the 00:28:00old county dump." But obviously, that's not the way you really want to proceed, and that's not a very intelligent way to do waste management. So we started to focus on waste management from a community scale, things like community recycling programs where we had people, even people who had been in county jails and area prisons to go along the road and pick up trash. But it was more than that. If they were picking up cans and glass and other materials that could be recycled, they were recycling them. And then some recycling programs were established. And then it was about how do we manage the collection of waste in smaller communities and rural counties? And back in the early 1980s, a lot of the counties had what they called green box sites. And that would be green, these green dumpsters there that would be settled on the side of the 00:29:00road, maybe anywhere from 8, 10, 15 of them, and if you wanted to get rid of your garbage from your residence, you had to put it in your car and take it there and pull into a green box site that would be muddy, potholes, rats, burning dumpsters, dumpster divers we used to call them--people who would be checking in the dumpsters for things they could retrieve and keep. And it was just not a very pretty site and not a place that was healthy or environmentally appropriate. So we came up with a design for what we call a convenience center where we would take these same green boxes and manage them in a very different way. We would build a fence around them, we would put two gates on 00:30:00them, we would have it manned certain hours of the day, various days of the week, we would educate people on how it was going to work in the future that you could only take your garbage there at certain times, but that it would be clean and safe. There would be someone there to help you. If you had something in particular that you thought might be of benefit to someone else, they could set it aside and then leave it there for somebody else who might need it or want it. There would be recycling there too. So you could go from someone, a small rural county having somewhere like 20 or 30 sites all around the county that a garbage truck would have to go out and pick up the garbage and then bring back to their landfill, to maybe seven or eight convenience center sites that were manned and safe and so much more pleasant an experience than what they were used 00:31:00to. And it took a little work because a lot of people liked the green box sites, but a lot of people also hated those green box sites. And I think we did this in maybe 20 or 30 communities and provided funds and planning and designs for them. Told them where they could get the, the funding for it. And we would oversee it and once they got one or two in, it was real easy for them to put in three or four and, you know, over a 5- or 6-year period transition the whole county. And this was also at a time in the early 1980s when there were folks coming in from out-of-state with a load of hazardous material. They might bring it to your old green box site and just dump some type of hazardous material in your 00:32:00dumpsters because they could. There was nobody there to stop them and no one would even know that you'd done it. So they would come in as sort of "midnight haulers" and open up the valve on the back of a [tanker] truck and just let [liquid] hazardous material spill out on the roadway in several counties. There's several bad examples in eastern North Carolina of that and a few in East Tennessee as well, and the cost for cleanup for something like that was just amazing. So a lot more emphasis on how do we clean up the mess we made and how do we make it better? And how do we move to the next best thing that's an improvement of the technology and what's the next smartest, best technology available that we can do?

MUMMERT: And it sounds like it would've been much less costly for the 00:33:00county governments to be able to deal with it all.

CRUTCHFIELD: Oh yes, a lot of cost savings. We ultimately made up a brochure on how do you do it and, back in that day, the old slide show presentation, which would be PowerPoint now. But, you know, how do you do it? How do you plan it? What do they look like? What's the cost? How does this compare with the alternative? What are the benefits? What are the pros and cons? And, you know, once the community saw how to do it, we might give them a, a small financial grant of maybe $15,000; $20,000; $25,000 and with that they could put in the first two or three. And after that they had strong community support to fund it themselves. I know in the county we live in, here in Watauga County [North Carolina], they had put in one or two, but it still took a good 15 years before they got them all over the county. And when I was doing 00:34:00economic development for the local [electric] co-op here, we did another county, I guess in the 1990s, late 1990s, I helped them put in convenience centers. And, you know, I still see them out there today when I'm traveling in rural counties across North Carolina or Tennessee. And I see them develop the signs up in fenced-in areas. It used to be nobody wanted those in their, in their neighborhoods, now these days, people are so proud to have them there.

MUMMERT: Yes, I'm not familiar that much with some of the other Tennessee Valley states and what they do for rural solid waste collection, but someone told me within the past year, that would know, that in the State of Tennessee, Tennessee has 95 counties and 93 have convenience center systems today.

CRUTCHFIELD: Yes. Yes, so that's the type of thing that TVA did, you 00:35:00know, those brochures, we made presentations at national conferences on recycling and waste management. We went to several solid waste management associations on a national level and made presentations. A lot of the big companies like Waste Management, at the time, were very enthusiastic about that because they were trying to do regional landfills. And regional landfills were hard to get in anywhere, but it made a lot more sense because it was very costly to do it right and meet all the environmental regulations, and sometimes counties just couldn't afford to do that. But they could say, "We're going to do this, but we're also going to do convenience centers out there." And so a lot of, Waste Management put in a lot of those convenience centers and ran them as well. And so, when you get the private sector wanting to take over what the government sector has created, you know you're successful.

MUMMERT: Well, my next question is what was in store for you after you were participating in TVA's waste efforts?

CRUTCHFIELD: Well, we started doing some things in economic development and looking at areas of businesses. We had a new Director, Chairman, at the TVA at the time, who had come from running the Nissan plant there in Tennessee, and so a stronger focus in the late 1980s on job development too and what types of industry could we create. So one aspect of that was, you know, we assisted some communities in going beyond just the collection of waste to the disposal of waste, but how do you create jobs in doing that? So we started a program of developing baling waste instead of the old, old, and in many cases 00:37:00still current, area of just flattening waste with big frontend loaders that would pack the waste down. And the balers would actually take the waste and, under several hundred thousand pounds of pressure, create bales out of the waste, wrapped in wire, about the size of a big table about 4 feet by 5 feet by 6 feet and then you would take those big bales that weighed slightly less than a ton and stack those up in what would then be called a bale fill versus a landfill. And maybe instead of putting dirt on them at the end of the day, you would actually put a small foam layer that could then be, you could use some of the leachate in the area and spray on the, on the garbage and cover it up at the end of the day and then come back the next day and just continue what 00:38:00you were doing. But we found that there was a lot of economic development opportunities in that in terms of making the baler, getting those balers out to communities, creating whole concepts of how do we create jobs around recycling and other areas. And so, we were also looking at other types of economic development and recruitment at that time. At that time, a lot of focus was coming in on the automotive end and we were focusing in on electric cars and how do we develop an industry behind that, and battery manufacturers and, you know, a lot, a lot of focus on bringing automotive facilities to the Southeast at that time. Sort of like when, I guess, Mercedes-Benz went down to Alabama and different states were competing for major automotive plants. Those 00:39:00are some of the projects I was working on. I was fortunate that this little electric co-op that, up here in northwest North Carolina, Blue Ridge Electric, decided they wanted to get back into economic development and called myself and another fellow at TVA, Mike Stitt. We were working out in the district, at the time, of northeast Tennessee, southwest Virginia, and western North Carolina and they asked us if we could help them develop a job description and program for the electric co-op to start doing more economic development in their four counties. And we did that and helped them come up with a job description and then that took some time to get approved. And then they finally got it approved and about that time, as usual at TVA, they were getting ready to go 00:40:00through one more reorganization in my ten year history there. And I think this one was going to require me and my family to move to Nashville. And so I applied for the position and ended up coming over here to Blue Ridge, where, in reality, I ended up doing the same things at Blue Ridge that I did at TVA. It's like you can do anything you want to do, but only do it once. You know, don't create a program that has to be funded year after year after year. So it was a great transition for me. I enjoyed moving back to North Carolina where I grew up and living in the beautiful northwest mountains and living here in Boone. So it was a great transition. One of the other things that we did during, at the end of my, my term [at TVA] there at Blue Ridge, was leadership development. 00:41:00We were beginning to realize that a lot of communities, especially rural communities--I think, leadership is one of those things that only 10 percent of the population in reality gravitate toward leadership positions in a community. So if you're a community of 20,000, 10 percent would only be, you know, 2,000 people in leadership positions spread over all types of things in a community, like churches and hospitals, chambers of commerce and local government, regional government, county government. And it meant that a lot of times that the community leaders really did not have the skills they needed to be in the positions for which they were being presented with. And so we started a leadership development program. And I think that's also one of the things that I was most proud of there at the end, was a community leadership 00:42:00program that TVA did with the Southern Growth Policies Board. And I ended up taking those same type of programs and doing that over here in the Blue Ridge Electric service area. And it made a real difference in terms of having leadership that had a good sense of the big picture, not just that you can do one thing to solve an issue, but that you do have to look at community development and economic development, environmental management, and sustainable development. And if you do all of these things, then you're going to be a successful community.

MUMMERT: Yes, Brian, you've taken us on a great and quite diverse trip through your experience at TVA--appropriate technology, energy, community 00:43:00development, waste management, a variety of types of project and activities--and I'm not going to repeat them all. But what I'd like to do now is just ask you to think about your overall career at TVA and, I don't know whether you'll pick energy projects or community development or waste management or any others, but I'd like to ask you what, among all these activities that you were involved in, what were one or two of your most favorite memories?

CRUTCHFIELD: You know, sometimes, it wasn't so much me doing something for somebody else as was as it was somebody else teaching me something. And TVA was very supportive of having you continue your education and sending you 00:44:00to conferences or meetings or making sure that you were able to call people on the phone or correspond and find out, "You're doing something very creative. How can we do that? Or how can we make it better?" And the fact that management was very supportive in that area, all the way up to the very top of the Board. And often times it was the top of the Board sending things back down to us saying, "Look at this thing I've read. Do you think this is something we could do here in the Valley?" And, you know, something as short and simple as that, but it being the truth. And we would pursue it. We would find out. We would bring in the experts, they would consult with us. They would tell us or we would send information to them about what we had done. And it's that type of 00:45:00feedback, especially, you know, we're talking about a time before the internet, before everybody had computers on their desk. It was a time in which you would go to the TVA Library and go through resource documents and documents would be shared with you and circulated among 20 or 30 different people, certain articles or certain periodicals and publications. And that type of approach of networking and information sharing, I think, was sort of the key at TVA that we wanted to be a national demonstration agency. That we wanted everything we did to be the best. And the fact that TVA hired people that were the best, that had great credentials, that had gone to great programs and colleges and 00:46:00universities and done things before they got there. So when they came, they weren't just wet behind the ears people, that they were folks that had, you know, great experiences. You know, you're, you're a good example of that. You came from one of the largest waste management or waste water management demonstration projects up in Michigan?

MUMMERT: Muskegon.

CRUTCHFIELD: Muskegon, yes. And, you know, projects like that that could be replicated on a smaller scale. You know, the fact that we would seek out people like that who were doing unique things. And it, it was great. I mean, you had colleagues that came from everywhere and if you needed an expert in something, chances are there was one at TVA who did that. If you were concerned about integrated pest management, somebody knew about that at TVA. If you 00:47:00wanted to do solar green houses, we brought people in who did that. Especially in those early days and after Three Mile Island, we were bringing in the best of the best in renewable energies and wind and photovoltaics and solar water heating. And the things that we did at TVA, I think, just made a real difference in setting up the rest of the utilities in the country to do more. Now, you know, it's been almost, we're approaching in 2033 the 100th anniversary of TVA, but you know, the last 25, 30 years, in particular since I left, the changes I see in other utilities like Duke Energy, in particular, you know, they're doing things now that TVA was doing in the mid-1980s. But everybody's doing 00:48:00it on a different scale and on a different level and using different technologies. And that things have improved, but I think, again, TVA being a national demonstration agency and making things that can be replicated and viewed and information shared and networking, you know, it was no one project I would want to say made the big difference. There were just projects everywhere. And, you know, at any given time, I was probably involved in 30 to 50 projects in a year that might last one, two, three years in duration before they would be completed. So everything was always a little bit of juggling going on, but at the same time, providing the right resources and the right technical assistance, you really could make things happen and you could do it very quickly. And, especially knowing that you weren't trying to develop a big program 00:49:00that would then be done in every county in the TVA service area. It's like, "We're going to show you how to do it, but it's up to you to replicate it."

MUMMERT: Well, that's a good answer for what some of your favorite memories were. I must say good because also you, I must say humbly, that you complimented the interviewer as you were giving your answer. But I'm not going to let you get, get away with that answer. You said you were involved in a lot of different things, but I would like you to pick out just one or two, maybe, that, two of the most important accomplishments in your career.

CRUTCHFIELD: Well, let me say--

MUMMERT: That may be difficult, but--

CRUTCHFIELD: Well, we had a TVA leadership awards program at one time. And I had helped develop what the guidelines might be and how do you pick out a 00:50:00community, a project that is exemplary that other folks at TVA need to be looking at as truly a national demonstration nature and that has really made an impact. And myself, and you, and a few other employees, Patrick, and a couple of others really, received an award in that, I guess, maybe the first or second year of those leadership awards for, leadership excellence awards at TVA.

MUMMERT: Yes, you mean Patrick O'Connor.

CRUTCHFIELD: Patrick O'Connor, exactly. And, you know, one of the projects was that community convenience center project, as to how that made a real difference. It cleaned up the environment, made things neater, safer, 00:51:00for recycling to take place where people didn't just think of waste as waste, but thought of it, of it as a resource. You know, in my county, we still, we still have one that's manned and also has a little swap shop out there that the people have a whole series of recycling areas that you can drop your recycling at. If you are elderly and having a hard time getting the garbage out of your car and putting it into a container, there's someone there to help you. It's a paved area. It's not dirty, nasty. The attendant keeps it clean and, at the same time, the attendant generally is an older person that's retired and doing this on a part-time basis because (1) they enjoy doing it, and (2) it's just, just a little money to help things along. But they enjoy that role. And, you 00:52:00know, to see that still going on and to realize that, gosh, you know, 40 years ago I got an award for helping design this program and getting it implemented, and here it is still in place. And that's a nice feeling to know that you had done something unique and that it's still out there. And people are still doing it and probably still looking at that, that TVA brochure from, you know, 1985 on how to design and develop a county convenience center model. And it's nice when you see that. It makes you feel good because we are still generating waste, we still have rural counties that aren't big enough to have a landfill, but do need to collect, collect their waste and do it in such a way that is better to manage as opposed to green boxes or just a centralized landfill transfer 00:53:00station. And, you know, when I came here to Blue Ridge, three of our counties didn't have anything like that. Now all three of them have that. And the fourth county, a little more urban and larger, they even developed some convenience centers in the towns of Lenoir, Hudson, and Granite Falls that made a real difference for them. So, just knowing that you had an impact in one area that has stayed on and has been a good resource and was thought through and makes a difference. Yes.

MUMMERT: As you're talking, also it's interesting to me that it seems that there's been really fundamentally no better technology or approach that's replaced it in those 40, in those 40 years.

CRUTCHFIELD: Yes, until we get to the time of improving our packaging 00:54:00and things of that sort, you know, because right now recycling is going through a major transition because a lot of our recycling was, was being sent to China and they were developing, shaping our waste into glass and metal, electronics, etc. But now they're not taking it and other countries aren't taking it. So I think, I think we're going to see a whole new kind of sustainable manufacturing type of emphasis that says if you're going to produce an automobile, you need to make sure that all the pieces and components can be either reused or recycled or replaced. And so, I think, you know, that's one of those things that we need to look at.

MUMMERT: Do you want, do you have any other thoughts on any of your major accomplishments?

CRUTCHFIELD: No, that pretty much covers it.

MUMMERT: Okay.

CRUTCHFIELD: It was a great decade and I wouldn't have given it up for anything.

MUMMERT: Well, and as you indicated, TVA enabled or gave you the flexibility to work on all sorts of different things and gave the support and encouragement to do it.

CRUTCHFIELD: Yes.

MUMMERT: Even though you moved around from time to time from one job to another.

CRUTCHFIELD: Uh-huh. I mean, a lot of those reorganizations meant you had a lot of different managers and it let a lot of different people be managers. I know, I had my first African American boss, my first female boss, Hispanic boss, you know, from a diversity perspective, a lot of folks that maybe another agency or other companies would not have risen to the top. They did at TVA. And 00:56:00they did at TVA, not because they were given those jobs because they were minorities, they got those jobs because they were sharp and they were the best people for those positions. And they wanted to keep them. They wanted to be the best at it, and it was just great timing as to the types of things we did in, in that decade. It really made a difference, in my perspective, in my next job and how I saw people and where they came from and how do we improve things out there.

MUMMERT: I think those are some good words to end this interview on.

CRUTCHFIELD: Great, great.

MUMMERT: I appreciate your time and, once again, would like to say you had a most interesting, productive, and diverse career at TVA. And thanks again for your time.

CRUTCHFIELD: Alright, my pleasure.