Missouri youth take in sights, gain leadership skills in D.C.
The Harrisonville teenager was left speechless as soon as he jumped off the bus and onto the west lawn of the U.S. Capitol. Just days removed from working the dairy cows at his rural Missouri family farm, Case Melzer — and 102 of his newfound best friends — were heading up Capitol Hill to meet with their elected representatives.
“I was so awestruck when I first saw the Capitol because it’s just something that’s so grand,” says Case, who earned the trip to Washington, D.C., in part because of an essay he wrote on the life lessons and motivation he gets from the dairy industry. “The decisions made in those buildings affect us back home, so it’s really cool going inside and seeing how things work on a legislative level.”
Case was sponsored by Osage Valley Electric Cooperative as one of their delegates on the Missouri Youth Tour to Washington, D.C.
For nearly six decades, Missouri’s electric cooperatives have sent the Show-Me State’s most outstanding soon-to-be-seniors to our nation’s capital on the “trip of a lifetime.” This past June, Missouri’s 103 delegates spent a week in the greater Washington, D.C., area meeting their elected officials and making lifelong memories.
After a dip in attendance in 2022 following two years of virtual Youth Tours due to COVID-19, this year’s trip nearly reached its pre-pandemic levels. Missouri’s delegation was part of 1,800 students and chaperones who went on the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association Youth Tour during a two-week period.
“We are still feeling the effects of the pandemic,” says Beth Knudson, NRECA’s youth programs and training manager. “Not having our in-person Youth Tour in 2020 or 2021 put a dent in our applications simply because we don’t have those recent attendees in our pipeline to promote the program at school. But we’re getting there.”
Youth Tour is a chance for electric co-ops to send teens from their service areas to the capital to bring history to life. Before the trip, Chris Massman, Youth Tour coordinator for the Association of Missouri Electric Cooperatives, told the delegates to not focus on the physical monuments, but on the meaning behind each of them.
“The what of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial is physically just 144 granite panels stretching nearly 500 feet in Washington, D.C. The why is that it’s there to honor the 58,272 people who lost their lives in that conflict,” he says. “At first, the Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial is a 30-foot white granite sculpture. Its importance is remembering a man who fought for justice and equality.”
For Missouri’s cooperatives, the Youth Tour is an investment not only in their local youth and future leaders, but their communities as a whole. “The students who are selected to go on Youth Tour all possess a diverse set of leadership skills they use in their schools, churches and clubs back home,” says Chris. “Youth Tour allows them to not only grow their leadership further, but also share those skills with their peers, making them all more well-rounded leaders. Those skills all travel back home with them to their classroom, FFA meeting or future internship.”
The delegates met as strangers in Columbia on Monday, June 12, with a banquet and orientation. They traveled to St. Louis the next morning for a flight to D.C. and hit the ground running, visiting monuments shortly after landing.
Downtime was at a premium as the group’s itinerary was full from 6:30 a.m. wake-up calls to 11 p.m. room checks. Stops included the Marine Corps, Air Force, World War I and II, Vietnam War, Korean War, Martin Luther King, Jefferson, Eisenhower and Lincoln memorials, as well as photos at the White House.
In addition to meeting with their representatives in the U.S. Capitol, they visited historic sites such as the museums of the Smithsonian Institution, Mount Vernon and Ford’s Theatre, as well as the International Spy Museum. They observed the solemn tradition of the changing of the guard at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier at Arlington National Cemetery.
Each year, one delegate from Missouri is selected as the representative for the national Youth Leadership Council. Leah Thompson, sponsored by Black River Electric Cooperative, was chosen as the 2023-24 Missouri representative and will participate in virtual leadership summer training, travel to the NRECA Annual Meeting in San Antonio next March and address the 2024 Missouri Youth Tour delegates before their trip next June.
Leah was excited for the trip as she has a cousin and great-aunt who were delegates. “My grandma told me, ‘You can write a 1,000-word essay. It’s not that hard,’ ” she says. “I had never been to Washington, D.C., so this was a big trip for me. I was really excited and it definitely was the trip of a lifetime.”
The Youth Tour was inspired by then-Sen. Lyndon Johnson in 1957 when he asked rural electric leaders to “send youngsters to the national capital where they can actually see what the flag stands for and represents.” The following year, electric cooperatives in Iowa accepted that challenge and sent the first group of young people on a weeklong tour of our nation’s capital. Missouri followed suit in 1964 with 22 Show-Me State electric cooperatives sending 58 students to Washington, D.C. The 2023 trip was the 58th time Missouri’s electric cooperatives have stepped up to send the state’s youth to the capital.
After a week full of touring, Case says he and his fellow delegates definitely took in the why of everything they did. “I enjoyed Mount Vernon because of the history behind it with George Washington,” he says. “But I’ll always remember Arlington National Cemetery. It’s one of those things we hear or read about in school, but never really understand it until you go. I know how humbled I felt watching the changing of the guard and seeing all the headstones and what they represented for our country.”
For more information on the youth programs offered by Missouri’s Electric Cooperatives, visit moyouthtour.com.