Fond Farewell

After 36 Years With SAEC, Hill Embraces Life’s Next Chapter

Mark Hill got the first slice of 4 red velvet cakes, baked in his honor by a fellow retiree.

Co-workers past and present, board members, and family members packed South Alabama Electric Cooperative’s (SAEC) community room in March as Hill ended his 36-year career with SAEC, retiring as the cooperative’s vice president of business administration.

“I’ll miss the people,” Hill says. “You hear it pretty much everywhere you go, but the co-op is like a family.”

Hill began his career on the business side of utilities at Alabama Electric Cooperative — now PowerSouth Energy Cooperative. He worked part-time from January to September 1984 while he attended Lurleen B. Wallace Community College in Andalusia. He left to attend college in Troy, and about a year later, he received a phone call from AEC with an offer of full-time work.

4 years later, Max Davis, SAEC’s general manager at the time, mentioned his search for a new data processing manager to AEC’s chief financial officer, who gave Davis Hill’s name. Davis gave Hill a call, and in 1989, Hill joined SAEC.

“It came out of nowhere,” Hill says. “I wasn’t looking to go anywhere, but it just worked out. Obviously, it’s been a blessing with the opportunities I’ve had here.”

Witness to Change

The inner workings of the cooperative were vastly different in 1989, Hill says. There was no network. There was 1 mainframe computer with terminals at each employee’s workstation.

In 1999, Hill became SAEC’s office manager, supervising billing and customer service. Hill often came face-to-face with members who were unhappy about their bill. Hill says he learned the “craft of dealing with people” when they’re upset. While he couldn’t satisfy every member who came to his office, his method was to be nice and explain as much as he could from the cooperative’s standpoint.

“I just found the main thing was to listen to them and let them get it out,” Hill says. “Most of the time, it would settle them. I might not be able to fix their issue, but I could at least say, ‘Look, I’m sorry that you’re upset about this, and obviously we’ll do anything we can to try and help you.’”

There were no online payment options, payments were made strictly by checks, cash, and money orders. There was 1 billing cycle — today there are 4 — with a due date of the first day of the month, with cutoffs a few days later.

“Cutoff was just crazy,” Hill says. “Cutoff was always the fifth of the month, and there would just be people piled into the lobby trying to pay. I nearly shiver thinking about it.”

1 of the biggest positive changes Hill says he witnessed in recent years was the construction of SAEC’s new building. Not only is it roomier and more modern, but Hill says the new facility gave the cooperative storage space it didn’t have for trucks and equipment.

The new office was also built with members in mind, Hill says. Members now have a drive-thru payment window they can use rather than make the long trek from the parking lot to the old building. Members also have more payment options located around SAEC’s service territory, and new members no longer must come into the office to sign up for service. They can do it online.

“That’s what we’ve always tried to do, which was to look at the member first,” Hill says. “How can we best serve them and make things easier for them? Hopefully, we’ve done that.”

Family Time

In this next chapter of his life, Hill plans to spend more time with his family — his wife, Patty, children, Adam and Peyton, and grandchildren, Sophie, 7, and 2-year-old Samuel. When his wife retired 2 years ago and began keeping their grandson during the day, Hill says he began feeling the urge to retire. There will be beach trips, golf, and catching up with friends around Brantley.

But Hill says he will miss seeing his SAEC family daily.

“When you spend that much time with them, you know all about their families, their activities, and you grow up and you watch their kids and grandkids,” Hill says. “It’s been such a blessing to me as far as being able to work in a cooperative. A lot of my best friends work here, and it’s just such a good community to work in.”