Reflections from a co-op childhood to a storied career serving cooperative communities
October 2026
Richard G. Johnstone Jr.
by Richard G. Johnstone Jr., Guest Columnist
My birthplace is a rural county in west-central Georgia, its red clay fields peppered with pecan groves and peach orchards, its farms powered by an electric cooperative where my great-uncle served as general manager during its early days. My homeplace is a rambling Dutch Colonial on the outskirts of the county seat. My mother’s happy childhood was spent in this home, and when my father was assigned to an Army base in postwar Japan, she returned there to give birth to me.
It was a home filled with love, and with lots of family members. Three generations lived under that roof during my mother’s childhood, and my arrival made me the fourth generation to share the space, with a great-grandmother, grandparents, two great-aunts and my mother.
My father’s military service ended near my first birthday, and upon his return home, he began civilian life in a variety of sales jobs with large companies that moved us all over the Southeast, from Atlanta to Charleston, Tampa to Jacksonville, Charlotte to Birmingham, and finally to Richmond, where I’ve lived since age 15. Throughout my childhood, my happiest days were spent not in the various suburbs where we lived for short stretches, but in that small Georgia town, during summers and holidays with those family members, whom we, fondly, called “the folks.”
All the folks are gone now, as is my mother, and that Georgia home was sold long ago. Other voices now fill those rooms, other feet now trod on those floorboards, other residents now make memories in those spaces. But my memories of living there are forever fixed.
Memories of Christmases in a house over flowing with friends and extended family, enjoying a sideboard filled with turkey and ham and dressing, and once-a-year treats of divinity candy, ambrosia salad and jam cake. Of summers spent working at the soda fountain of my grandfather’s pharmacy, making lemonades and scooping ice cream, a dime a scoop.
Memories of August church revivals, my grandmother elbowing my grandfather when he drifted off during too-long sermons. Of hot nights without air conditioning, with relief from a cool breeze through the windows arriving only once it was time to get up. Of the tiny den crammed with seven or eight of us, watching “Gunsmoke” or “Lawrence Welk.” Of stories from my great-grandmother, of her childhood in the 1880s.
Given my roots in rural Georgia, I was excited in 1985 to be hired as editor of Cooperative Living (then called Rural Living). During my 36-year tenure, I traveled from the Cumberland Gap to the Delaware shore and countless points in between, interviewing hundreds of cooperative consumers. Their values — community, fair dealing, neighbors helping neighbors — were the values I was taught growing up.
As I reflect on my time as steward of this iconic 80-year-old publication, I am pleased that we shifted the focus from syndicated pieces on national co-op issues to original stories on people and places within our local co-ops’ service areas. We also encouraged more interaction with readers, asking them to submit recipes, photos, letters and answers to various quizzes.
Home is a place, and home is also where you belong. There are many decades and many miles between that homeplace in a rural Georgia county served by an electric cooperative, and a long career working for electric co-ops in the mid-Atlantic. But that long road ended up bringing me back where I belong, back home.
Richard G. Johnstone Jr. served multiple roles for the Virginia, Maryland & Delaware Association of Electric Cooperatives from 1985 to 2021 — as editor of Cooperative Living, executive vice president, and president and CEO. To watch a 20-minute video reflecting on 80 years of Cooperative
Living, narrated by Richard Johnstone, visit vmda.ec/cl80th.