Former TVA Chairman S. David Freeman, a Chattanooga native who was an engineer, attorney and executive for three of America's largest electric utilities, died Tuesday morning of a heart attack in California, according to his daughter. He was 94 years old.
Known as "the Green Cowboy," Freeman was an outspoken advocate for renewable power and electrifying America. After President Jimmy Carter appointed Freeman to serve as chairman of the Tennessee Valley Authority in 1977, he pushed the federal utility to promote conservation, as well as power plant construction, and built the electric vehicle test track in Chattanooga as part of TVA's early efforts to promote electric vehicles.
Freeman, the son of an umbrella repairman who operated a shop on what is now M.L. King Boulevard in Chattanooga, was born on Jan. 14, 1926. At the urging of a high school teacher who noted his math skills, Freeman enrolled at the Georgia Institute of Technology and took a job after graduation with TVA as an engineer. After five years of designing power plants and hydroelectric stations, he enrolled at the University of Tennessee's law school and returned to the TVA as an attorney.
Freeman followed his boss, the general counsel of the TVA, to the nation's capital, where over the next two decades he advised Presidents Johnson, Nixon and Carter and the Senate Commerce Committee on energy policy.
After leaving TVA in 1984, Freeman headed other major electric utilities in Texas, New York and California. Last month, he joined the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy as a senior energy advisor and criticized his successors at TVA for not doing more to promote energy efficiency, conservation and clean energy and for what he called excessive executive salaries.
As TVA's chairman four decades ago, Freeman's pay was limited to what members of Congress are paid, currently $174,000 a year, and he said he traveled around the Tennessee Valley in his own car or in a former Vietnam-era Army helicopter. The current TVA CEO, Jeff Lyash, was paid a compensation package last year of $8.1 million and travels on an $11.2 million Cessna jet and a $6.95 million executive helicopter TVA bought from Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones.
Dr. Stephen A. Smith, executive director for the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy, said Freeman "was a visionary force of nature and I'm proud to have collaborated with him over the years in support of our common goals of a cleaner, greener world.
"Dave taught me that most utilities will first tell you 'no' on advancing many clean energy policies, but never take no for an answer," Smith said. "We will miss his leadership and tenacity, and will honor him by carrying his vision forward in our work."
V. John White, a clean energy advocate who met Freeman when he took over the Sacramento Municipal Utilities District in 1990, said Freeman remained an outspoken advocate for public power for his entire life.
"That was his whole mindset: Public power was the place to be," White told the Los Angeles Times.
Freeman is survived by his daughter, two sons, nine grandchildren and a great-grandson.