Photos by Rocky Nimmons/Courier

Pickens-area resident Geraldine Chapman receives her gift — a cast-iron skillet emblazoned with a 75th anniversary logo — from Blue Ridge Electric Cooperative employee Rickey Parker at the co-op’s annual meeting of members last week.

PICKENS — An estimated 5,000 people turned out last Thursday for Blue Ridge Electric Cooperative’s annual meeting of members, hosted at the utility’s Pickens equipment facility.

Blue Ridge Electric Cooperative president and CEO Charles Dalton, left, greets director Mendel Stone of Oconee County at last week’s annual members meeting.

The nearly 3,000 members who registered for the event each received a cast-iron skillet embossed with the cooperative’s 75th anniversary logo.

Preliminary entertainment for the evening featured the Sweet Potato Pie Kids and Doyle Burton and the Silver Dollar Gang. The headline act was the Chuck Wagon Gang, who came on stage after the adjournment of the business session.

A good part of the program was devoted to observance of the cooperative’s 75th anniversary. Members of the Oconee and Pickens legislative delegations presented a concurrent resolution passed by both houses of the S.C. General Assembly. The resolution commended Blue Ridge for its many years of service.

The cooperative’s president and CEO, Charles Dalton, paid tribute to the cooperative’s original CEO and his immediate predecessor, the late A.J. “Jud” Hurt. Attendees were also treated to the premiere of a video that recounted the organization’s 75-year history.

In delivering his management report to the membership, Dalton told attendees Blue Ridge is continuing to make major additions to its network of power facilities. He cited new electrical substations that are scheduled to come online in 2015 — one in southern Oconee County and the other on the Greenville-Spartanburg County border near Landrum.

Three incumbent Blue Ridge directors had been nominated at March district meetings of the cooperative’s members. Those incumbents — Jimmy Lee Dodgens and Frank Looper of Pickens County and Oconee County’s Mendel Stone — were reelected by acclamation to new three-year terms on the board.

Prize drawings were held after the business meeting. Cynthia White of West Union was the grand-prize winner, as she received a 2009 Ford F-150 pickup.