National Rural Telecommunications Cooperative

And my wife that I met at my, the, the, The lady that I met at University of Virginia, she thought living in Northern Virginia in the Washington, D.C. area was where we should be.

And I was fortunate enough to find NRTC, National Rural Telecommunications Cooperative, where for about 11 years, I like to say I tried to be a matchmaker for technologies and co-ops across the country, built my network of co-op people that I knew all over, and And after 11 years, when we were ready, when I'd finally convinced her there was other places to live than D.C., I had chosen what I think is one of the best places to live in the world, which is the Wake Forest, North Carolina.

Beautiful area.

And so we're very happy there.

Missouri has a long history of putting people on boards to look out for our interests.

We also have a technology cooperative we deal with, the National Rural Technologies Cooperative out of Washington, D.C. NRTC, as they're called, provides us many services having to do with fiber optic services, after-hour calls, and many other items that we need to help us technology-wise through the years.

They've been integral in the formation of United Fiber and early on helped us get started in the business.

We still use them for several things today, including some project management for us.

NRTC has always been a strong partner.

NRTC, like the rest of these organizations, has board representation.

The current president of NRTC, he's the president of the board, is Lynn Hodges from Rawls County Electric, property in Missouri.

The previous president of NRTC was our own Gene Dorrell, while he was the CEO of United, was the president of NRTC for many years.