Mississippi Power storm crew vets become ghost hunters in Georgia

Six days after Brant Sanford was hired as a helper at Mississippi Power, Hurricane Frederic struck the Gulf Coast and he quickly found himself on his first storm duty, helping to restore power.

Almost 38 years later, Sanford is on a storm trip again as the Laurel line crew supervisor, part of Mississippi Power’s 102-person team that is helping get the lights back on in Savannah, Ga., in the wake of Hurricane Matthew.

Larry Smith, an engineering analyst from Hattiesburg, also went on his first storm trip right after he was hired with the company but he can’t remember the name of the storm.

That’s understandable since it was 40 years ago.

Smith and Sanford are both on the doorstep of retirement — Sanford in February and Smith in March — but they didn’t consider that excuse to get a pass on this long, difficult job.

They answered the call, just like they have countless times over their nearly 80 years of combined service with the company. And this will likely be their last storm trip, given the storm duty rotation.

“It was my turn, you go,” Sanford succinctly said.

Smith even cancelled a weekend fishing trip to Toledo Bend to join his Mississippi Power teammates in Georgia.

“It was my rotation,” he said. “I guess I could have declined but I wouldn’t do that to somebody.”

On Tuesday, Sanford was supervising a job to get power to the last customer in the Georgetown area of Savannah where the Mississippi team was assigned when it arrived on Sunday.

That involved sister utility Georgia Power bringing in a marsh buggy to get a Mississippi Power crew to a pole where a line was down to the Grove Point Plantation, a stately Southern manor that was once an expansive rice field.

The land where it sits is better known for the local legend of being a hideout for infamous pirate Blackbeard.

A local groundskeeper cutting up fallen pine trees shared the story that Blackbeard had a girlfriend who stayed on the property. One day Blackbeard left, but never returned for her, so the legend goes that she now haunts the main house on the property.

“We’ve had a lot of people see her in the window of the bedroom on the second floor,” the man said. “People hear noises in there all the time. A whole lot of people refuse to stay in there.”

The residence and surrounding land is now owned by Great Dane Trucking Company, and they use it to entertain guests and host corporate outings.

“OK guys, we have to be done by dark,” Sanford jokingly told his crew after hearing the ghost story.

After waiting for the marsh buggy to arrive, Laurel linemen ventured into the marsh, climbed the pole and reconnected the wire to get power for the paranormal at Grove Point Plantation.

With work ending in Georgetown, Smith and the rest of the Mississippi team were deployed to the Millhaven area of Savannah. There were no major projects but a lot of work to be done to get everyone power.

“We get the maps and locate the trouble,” Smith said of his job. “We stay ahead of the linemen so when they get there we know what we’re going to do. We run ahead and make decisions. We stay busy.”

Right now, Smith and Sanford are intensely focused on the job at hand but they can see their post-Mississippi Power life on the horizon.

“I’m going to fish,” Smith said. “That’s my hobby. I’m going to fish a lot.”

Sanford really doesn’t have any retirement plans.

“I’ve had to follow plans for 38 years,” he said. “I’m looking forward to not having any more plans.”