Team Leader Profile – Bard Jackson
Working with Electricity from a Big-Picture Perspective
Rebuilding Together Team Leader Bard Jackson doesn’t just know how to install an electrical fixture—he can electrify an entire region.
For more than 30 years of his career before retiring in 2014, Bard worked for the U.S. Rural Electrification Administration and National Rural Electric Cooperative Association. At the REA (later renamed the Rural Utilities Association), he worked with electric cooperatives to plan, fund and inspect their distribution lines, including land acquisition and eminent domain proceedings.
At the NRECA, he did similar work in Africa and Latin America, doing feasibility studies and cost analyses for Third World countries needing electricity. Bard’s most memorable projects were developing small hydroelectric plants that brought power to rural areas of Costa Rica and Zaire, (now the Republic of Congo), where remote villagers had only portable generators to power refrigerators and small businesses.
After graduating with an electrical engineering degree from Long Beach State University in 1969, Bard’s first experience developing electrical grids came with the Peace Corps in Brazil, where he worked on electric cooperatives to supply power to rural areas.
Bard then joined the U.S. Navy for four years, first working on its nuclear power program and later serving as the electrical engineering officer on the USS Sanctuary, a World War II hospital ship that was undergoing extensive renovations for stationing in Greece. The Navy cancelled that plan, but not before Bard met his wife Susan, a nurse who was also serving on the ship.
After Navy service, Bard attended graduate school at Georgia Tech before starting his career of developing electric utilities.
Learning by doing
Growing up in the Los Angeles area, Bard acquired handyman skills at an early age. His father, a chemical engineer, “never paid anybody to do anything at our house; he did it all.”
The family had a small ranch in the Sierra Mountains. “We had a few head of cattle on it. When you’re a rancher/famer, you do everything,” he said. In summers during high school, Bard helped build a future retirement home there for his parents. More recently, he did repairs and maintenance on a couple rental properties he previously owned in Northern Virginia. His advice for do-it-yourselfers: Look at YouTube, then “do it right the first time—that’s the fastest way to do a job!”
Bard stays active with sports, volunteer work and visiting his two children and five grandchildren in Connecticut and California. In 2013, he played on an over-65 team that competed in the National Volleyball Association’s open national tournament in the Chesapeake Region. He now plays pickup soccer with friends who call themselves the ROMEOs—retired old men enjoying outdoor soccer.
His other volunteer work includes salvaging and nurturing landscaping plants at his home for the Falls Church Garden Club’s annual plant sale fundraiser. Owners of homes that are being torn down offer landscaping plants to the club. Bard digs up the plants, replants some at his home and keeps some in pots until transporting them to the spring sale site.
Bard started volunteering for RT-AFF’s predecessor, Christmas in April, through his church’s volunteer team. In 2015, he became a regular volunteer and team leader as the nonprofit expanded its services to year-round projects. In 2017, he won the Senior Volunteer award from Volunteer Fairfax. Today, Bard usually volunteers one day a week and serves as team leader for one project a month. Team leaders do initial assessments of clients’ homes, prepare work plans, assemble needed supplies and tools, and supervise the team’s work.
Bard enjoys that “every project is different—I learn something. It keeps me active and going to new places.” He encourages would-be volunteers for Rebuilding Together to “give it a try—see if it’s for you.”
Links:
USS Sanctuary
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Sanctuary
Falls Church Garden Club
https://www.fallschurchgardenclub.org/
Fairfax celebrates spirit of volunteerism at awards ceremony
Volunteer Profiles are a continuing series celebrating the dedicated Rebuilding Together Team Leaders and volunteers, who come from all walks of life—engineering, construction, government, diplomacy, the military, and more.
The profiles are written by Leon Rubis, a retired journalist and editor who started volunteering with us in 2021. A long-time DIYer, Leon says, “I thought I knew a lot, but I’ve learned so much more from working alongside our experienced teams. Every project feels like an episode of This Old House.”
In addition to making repairs and modifications with us as part of the RT Express program, Leon is now using his writing skills to spotlight the amazing people who make our work possible.
