Sometimes you can tell the measure of a man by the impact he leaves behind, both big and small.
Former 4-County Electric Power Association CEO Joe Cade was such a man.
“I will tell you this,” said eminently quotable Golden Triangle Development LINK CEO Joe Max Higgins. “When I was in Mr. Cade’s presence, I watched my language. He would cut up with you, but he was straight as a string.”
Cade, 78, passed away Monday at Baptist Memorial Hospital-Golden Triangle after twice working at 4-County.
He began his career in rural electrical power at 4-County in 1983 in the area of technology and customer service, remembered former 4-County CEO Allegra Brigham.
“He would always go the extra mile to help people,” Brigham said. “When people called with issues, he would get to the bottom of it and make things right if it was our mistake. If it wasn’t, he was such a gentleman and tried to explain to customers how things happened. I think the big thing was people felt like they could always trust him.”
Cade left 4-County in 1990 to work as general manager at Coosa Valley Electric Cooperative in Talladega, Alabama. In 1997 he was named CEO of Flint Energies in Reynolds, Georgia.
When he retired from Flint Energies he moved back to Columbus, but he came out of retirement to take the helm at 4-County as CEO in 2010. He would hold that post until 2018, when he retired for a second time.
“He was calm, steady, and didn’t get in a hurry or go too slow,” Higgins remembered. “When something came up, he worked through it and figured it out.”
Cade was “part of every deal we worked,” Higgins said.
“He and his team were right there when we planned the Communiversity, when we did Yokohama and a lot of the (Steel Dynamics) expansion projects,” Higgins said. “He never gave up. When we found a problem, it was always we’ve got to have a ‘yes,’ let’s figure out how to get it.”
Higgins said finding a yes sometimes meant temporarily dropping power lines.
The chairman of the board for Yokohama Tire decided to visit the Golden Triangle during the LINK’s effort to land the plant now located in Clay County, Higgins said. It had been raining torrentially and the site was a muddy mess, so the LINK planned to fly the dignitaries in by helicopter and land on the adjacent road.
“(Engineer Bob Calvert) said we could land on the road, but we’d have to be careful of the power lines because if the rotors hit them it could be a bad deal and someone could die,” Higgins said. “I said I was going to be on the helicopter, and I didn’t want that to happen.”
The whole tour was about to be scrapped when Cade came to the rescue, Higgins said.
“He said if all we needed to do was take the lines down, he would take them down,” Higgins said. “I said, ‘Can we do that?’ and he said, ‘We’re the power company. We can do anything we want.’”
The lines came down long enough for the helicopter to get in and out and then went right back up, Higgins said.
That can-do spirit and desire to help people also manifested in philanthropy, said 4-County Public Relations and Marketing Manager Jon Turner.
Cade was instrumental in setting up the 4-County Foundation, Turner said.
The foundation was set up in 2015, Turner said. It has given nearly $2 million to area nonprofits and is funded by spare change collected monthly from members who allow their bills to be rounded up to the nearest dollar.
“(Cade) had instituted that program in Georgia when he was CEO (at Flint Energies),” Turner said. “When he came back over here it was something he wanted to see. … It’s a terrific program. It’s pocket change that changes lives.”
The foundation collects an average of about $20,000 monthly, and about 93% of 4-County members donate, Turner said.
“The Bible talks about how you will know a tree by its fruit,” said 4-County CEO Brian Clark. “If you look at (the foundation), if you look at the people who interacted with him, you can see the fruits he left behind. … Mr. Joe was just a good man.”
Brian Jones is the local government reporter for Columbus and Lowndes County.
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