TVARA Embraces New Retirees, New Planning
By VICKIE ELLIS, TVARA Valleywide President
The TVA Retirees Association is welcoming lots of new members who have retired from TVA recently. We are truly excited to engage with TVA’s newest retirees, and we welcome you to one of our 18 chapters across the Tennessee Valley.
As you pause and reflect on your career, please know you are joining an organization of more than 20,000 retirees who have had rewarding careers just like you. We encourage you to become involved in your local chapter. There are lots of volunteer opportunities and quarterly chapter meetings to attend.
Last quarter, we introduced a strategic-planning effort that TVARA is undertaking this year. The purpose of this initiative is to plan wisely for the next five years, positioning our organization to grow and provide excellent services to our members.
We have completed the initial design phase with the help of our consultant, Bridge Innovate. There is much more work to finalize and present to TVARA’s Board of Directors. We would like to thank the members of our design-strategy team, who spent many hours developing the plan.
There is more work to be done, but we are off to a good start!
Our team members are as follows:
– John Austin, Cleveland Chapter President
– Les Bays, TVARA Vice President and Upper East Tennessee Chapter President
– Mickey Blackburn, Johnsonville/ Cumberland Chapter President
– John Blackwell, Muscle Shoals Chapter
– DeWitt Burleson, TVARA Past President
– Kate Davis, TVARA Secretary and Nashville Chapter Secretary
– Vickie Ellis, TVARA President
– Jo Anne Lavender, TVARA Immediate Past President
– Lisa Overly, TVARA Treasurer
– Renee Turnbow, Western Area Chapter President
We encourage you to look at the TVARA website at mytvara.org, where we recently posted some updated information about the public-power model and TVA’s many accomplishments in this area. Retirees often are asked questions about TVA by friends, colleagues, and neighbors in communities where they live. We wanted to provide you with this information to assist you in responding.
Along with publication on our website, we also provided the information to members for whom we have email addresses. Much of our ongoing communication will be sent via email. Please make sure we have your correct email address by sending an email to our office at tvara@tva.gov.
We want to thank again our Bicentennial Volunteers Inc. partners for providing funding for our volunteer projects across the Valley. Our communities benefit greatly from the work our volunteers perform and from the BVI grants received through the chapters.
We welcome your ideas about new projects for TVARA participation. Be sure to check out the articles on page 4 in this newsletter, as we have some benefit changes coming with the next open-enrollment period.
Have a safe and happy fall season!