Legends Worth
Remembering
Mary Ann Hadley
Keene Star Reporter, Aug. 1, 1996
"Bright Spot" of the County
Did you know that our college once built, owned and operated a power
and
light company? That firsthand story is told by Ben Putnam, as follows:
"President C.E. Kellogg felt that the Texas Power & Light Company
was
charging the college too much for power in 1934, so with his blessing
Julian
Thompson and L.G. Small went to work to make our own power. L.G. got a
generator, coupled it to a Buick Strait Eight engine, designed and built
a
synchronizing device out of six light bulbs. When the bulbs burned
steady, they
threw our power switch and pumped our electricity backwards into TP & L
soon
installed a rachet on their meter to keep this from happening.
"The old Buick plant was located in the old service department and L.G.
Small or his crew would start it about the time the dorm lights would
come on,
and ran it virtually unattended until lights went out at 10 PM. It
worked well
until the radiator hose burst and the whole thing burned itself up.
They
replaced it with a Case tractor industrial engine, which was moved into
the new
plant as a back up engine.
"I had been raised on a rice farm in El Campo, Texas, and had been
around
engines of this type. As soon as work started on the new plant, I
haunted this
place until finally L.G. succeeded in getting me transferred from the
College
Broom Shop to the Service Department, if I would return and stitch
brooms as
needed.
"The Gulf Oil Company gave the two main generators to
President
Kellogg,
provided he would sell Gulf on campus. We trucked these engines and
generators
from Breckenridge, Texas. The large one was a 50 HP, one-cylinder,
semi-diesel
and the smaller was a 25 HP, one-cylinder Fairbanks Morse. I suppose
the
electrical switch gear came with them, but I can say wherever it came
from, it
was at least twice as much as we needed.
"The plant was started May 19, 1935, and produced all of our
electricity 7
days a week, 24 hours a day until January 1, 1936.
"In the summer of 1935,
President
Kellogg was replaced by
H.H.
Hamilton.
It didn't take TP & L long to convince him that without automatic
regulation
of the electricity we would burn up all of the colleges electric motors.
"In May of 1935 L.G. Small moved to Washington Missionary College as
Engineer, and I was asked to replace him as Superintendent of
Maintenance at
SWJC."
"At that time our commercial power was subject to quite a lot of
failures.
I had devised a natural gas heater to keep the 50 HP glow plug hot so
that we
could start it immediately. During a bad ice storm the winter of 1936,
we were
without commercial power, so a happy crew started the old power plant to
run the
Campus motors until power was restored. During the Blackout Keene was
the
bright spot in Johnson County."
"Others who worked on this project were: Fred Frakes, Asst.
Engineer; Dale
Mock, Asst. Engineer; John Green, operator; Irwin Friesen, Julian Ball,
Harold
Colburn, George Steinert, Harold Steinert and Harold Laue."
In April, 1994, Ben Putnam presented a
display of 16 photos of the College Power and Light Plant, along with
the story of our "bright spot," to the SAC Museum of Student Life
where you can examine the entire exhibit at your leisure.
