Power generations: Beasley family tree rooted in company

Dozens of Mississippi Power employees follow in their parent’s footsteps at the company. Some would say Mississippi Power is in their blood.

For Charlie Beasley, that may not go far enough.

Beasley’s grandfather Calvin Oben Beasley, father Charles Orville Beasley and an uncle Oben Beasley all retired from the company, while two more uncles worked as contractors with the company.

“Mississippi Power has been a major part of my family tree,” said Charlie, an economic development representative in Hattiesburg.

Calvin Oben Beasley joined Mississippi Power in 1929, four years after the company was founded. He spent 40 years serving customers and retired as the local manager in the Sumrall office, a job he held for 33 years. He had five children – all boys – and two of them came to work at the company.

Calvin’s oldest son Oben retired as the local manager in Columbia while Charles Orville, known around the company as C.O., started as an engineer in Meridian.

He eventually became the supervisor of electric operations in the northern part of the company’s service territory before moving to the Economic Development department in 1985.

“My dad loved Mississippi Power. Every single thing about it,” Charlie said. “He loved putting on a hard hat and going out in a storm or getting a call from a neighbor if the power was out. He loved helping people.”

While working in Meridian, C.O. Beasley hired Paul DeNicola, who would become the youngest CEO in company history in 1990 and would eventually be named executive vice president at Southern Company.

Metering Services Manager Ricky Follin worked for C.O. Beasley for three years in the early part of his career. Follin remembers Beasley as a manager that was easy to get along with.

“He was a very personable man and easy to talk to,” Follin said. “He and I never had a cross word. C.O. was one of the most ‘hands off’ managers I’ve ever had. He trusted you to do your job.”

While in college at South Alabama, Charlie got his first taste of power company life by working at Plant Watson for two summers.

“It was a pure labor job,” he said. “We cleaned the yellow railings around the plant and swept up around the boiler. It was not fun.”

After graduating with a degree in marketing, he interned in the Economic Development department during the summer of 1998, one year after his father retired from the company.

“They put me at his old desk that summer, which was really cool,” Charlie said. “But they didn’t have any openings, so I had to find a job somewhere else.”

Charlie landed at Stennis with the Mississippi Enterprise for Technology. He worked there for 15 years, oftentimes partnering with Mississippi Power’s Economic Development department to recruit and develop companies and host events.

“During those years at Stennis, when I would work with Mississippi Power employees, they treated me like family because I was related to a retiree,” he said. “It was an extension of the culture and I recognized that.”

Charlie became a full-time member of the Mississippi Power family in November 2014. Since arriving, he’s enjoyed working with old friends and meeting new ones.

“I hope it gives others comfort about the home I was raised in,” he said. “I don’t feel like I’m in a foreign land. I feel like I’m home.”

Charlie is the proud father of four children and he’s already identified the fourth generation of his family to work at Mississippi Power.

“My 10-year-old is the smartest person I’ve ever met in my life, so we should start recruiting him,” he said. “I see the technical and engineering traits in two of my kids, so maybe those skills skip a generation!”