A yearlong celebration

Two years ago, some of us at YEC start­ed direct­ing our focus toward arriv­ing at the 75th year of our found­ing. It was our intent not to allow that mile­stone to go by with­out pay­ing prop­er recog­ni­tion to its impor­tance.

Mem­bers of our employ­ee team and I had­n’t advanced too far in our cel­e­bra­to­ry plans before we reached a con­clu­sion: a sin­gle-day obser­vance sim­ply would­n’t be ade­quate for spot­light­ing this notable event. In order to do jus­tice to YEC’s his­to­ry, we believed we should take an approach that would expose as many per­sons as pos­si­ble to our sto­ry. It was also our desire to estab­lish some mark­ers that would serve to inform future gen­er­a­tions about YEC and our accom­plish­ments.

We set­tled on some specifics we thought would ful­fill those aims. One idea was to seek a res­o­lu­tion of the S.C. Gen­er­al Assem­bly that would call atten­tion to this anniver­sary. With the enthu­si­as­tic sup­port of her fel­low law­mak­ers, Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Raye Felder took this project in hand. Ulti­mate­ly, they gar­nered unan­i­mous votes for the res­o­lu­tion in both hous­es of the leg­is­la­ture. I was hon­ored to accept this leg­isla­tive res­o­lu­tion dur­ing our annu­al meet­ing from state Sen­a­tor Wes Hayes.

Anoth­er thought was to pro­duce a video. The result was a 10-minute film that skill­ful­ly mixed indi­vid­ual rec­ol­lec­tions with images from 1941 to the present. This video was pre­miered before thou­sands dur­ing our annu­al meet­ing, and it received a warm recep­tion. It’s now avail­able for view­ing.

“High Volt­age Heroes” is an addi­tion­al anniver­sary fea­ture that was launched ear­li­er this year. This ini­tia­tive was designed to rec­og­nize 75 peo­ple who have big hearts and embody the spir­it of the co-op pro­gram. The recip­i­ents of this award were rec­og­nized at a recep­tion and received a cash prize. We are extreme­ly proud of their out­reach and the pos­i­tive dif­fer­ence they con­tin­ue to make.

More to come

On Sat­ur­day, Oct. 15, our cel­e­bra­tion will con­tin­ue with our Mem­ber Appre­ci­a­tion Shred Day. The onsite event, which will be held from 9 a.m. until noon at both of our offices, offers YEC’s mem­bers a free ser­vice to pro­vide a secure way to prop­er­ly dis­pose of any con­fi­den­tial doc­u­ments.

We also plan to hon­or our vet­er­ans who are mem­bers of YEC on Vet­er­ans Day. Vet­er­ans who come into our offices, with prop­er iden­ti­fi­ca­tion from 8 a.m. until 5 p.m., on Fri­day, Nov. 11, will receive a $20 YEC bill cred­it and a spe­cial gift.

We’re using all of 2016 to com­mem­o­rate our anniver­sary in hopes that all of our mem­bers will have an oppor­tu­ni­ty to take part in help­ing us cel­e­brate our 75th birth­day.