March 8, 2006

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Stork wins prestigious national award

Frank Stork

Frank Stork, former CEO and executive vice president of the Association of Missouri Electric Cooperatives (AMEC), has received a prestigious award for lifetime achievement. The National Rural Electric Cooperative Association (NRECA) presented Stork with its coveted Clyde T. Ellis Award, Feb. 21, during the organization’s 2006 annual meeting in Orlando, Fla.

In recognizing Stork, an NRECA spokesman touted the Jefferson City resident’s “ability to overcome obstacles standing in the way of cooperatives” and said Stork “always does the right thing in the right way for the right reasons.”

Stork joined the staff of the Association of Missouri Electric Cooperatives in 1972 and served as the statewide organization’s general manager from 1976 until his retirement in 2004. AMEC provides essential services to member-owned, non-profit electric cooperatives around Missouri and represents the interests of electric co-ops and their members before the Missouri General Assembly and the U.S. Congress.

Besides overseeing AMEC, Stork is credited with building coalitions with other organizations serving rural areas. One effort, in the late 1990s, led to the installation of Weather Alert warning transmitters on electric co-op radio towers, and resulted in Missouri being the first state in the nation to provide 100 percent severe weather warning coverage for its citizens.

Frank Stork accepts the Clyde T. Ellis Award from NRECA President Ron Bergh

Stork, a fixture at the state Capitol, is also known by rural residents across Missouri, thanks to a monthly column that appeared in Rural Missouri, AMEC’s statewide publication. In 1995, the Cooperative Communicator’s Association named Stork CEO Communicator of the Year. In 2005, he was named to the Missouri Institute of Cooperative’s Hall of Fame.

The Clyde T. Ellis Award, which Stork received in February, is presented by NRECA, a Washington, D.C. organization representing America’s 900 member-owned electric co-ops. The award is named for the association’s first general manager, a former congressman from Arkansas. It honors cooperative leaders who go above and beyond the call of duty in furthering the principles and progress of rural electrification. In receiving the award, Stork praised Ellis as a tireless champion of rural people and the cooperative movement.

Stork, a native of South Dakota, was joined by his wife, Susan, as he accepted the award. Following Stork’s retirement in 2004, Barry Hart, a former AMEC employee and later CEO of a Kansas statewide electric cooperative association, replaced him at AMEC.

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March 8, 2006
For more information, contact:
Jim McCarty, (573) 659-3402
jmccarty@amec.coop