Texas Teens Take DC

58th Youth Tour delegation delivers once-in-a-lifetime experiences

Francis Patanpatan wasn’t sure what to expect when he was selected by Taylor EC to represent the co-op on the Government-in-Action Youth Tour. But by the fourth day of the eight-day trip to Washington, D.C., he didn't want to be anywhere else.

“Now I don’t want to leave,” he said. “It’s a really, really fun trip.”

It’s a story as old as Youth Tour (about 58 years), but one that never gets old. Patanpatan and 146 other Texas teens representing 55 electric cooperatives met as skeptical strangers in Austin on June 16 and left June 24 bonded as friends for life.

In between, they laughed, cried, danced, screamed “the stars at night” and traipsed all over D.C. on Youth Tour.

“There’s no way to describe it,” said Cecilia Phan, who represented Bowie-Cass EC. “It’s all the emotions in one week.”

Amid the whirlwind tour of Washington, which included the Smithsonian Institution museums and the Holocaust Memorial Museum and multiple memorials, Texas delegates met with their representatives on Capitol Hill, took in an orchestral performance at the Kennedy Center, and loudly and proudly represented Texas at Youth Day—an NRECA-organized meetup of all 1,659 co-op delegates representing 44 states.

Denton Moore of Littlefield, representing Golden Spread EC, was chosen by the Texas chaperones as this year’s Youth Leadership Council representative. Members of the YLC are invited back to Washington in July for a leadership workshop focused on the utility industry, and they play an important role at the NRECA annual meeting in the spring.

Click here to see more photos from the 58th Texas delegation.