Benjamin David Gates

• Grandpa “Ben” Gates was the consummate (with high degree of skill and quiet flair), dependable and capable farmer, politician and businessman.

• Ben was born and raised on a farm in the Harrisburg Illinois area along with several of his 9 brothers and 2 sisters.

• Ben and his wife Olive Bea Oliver had 3 children in their new house built on their new farm in Cottage Township in the area called New Hope Community.

• The land was on Muddy Road and was less than one mile from both the Ole Gates Places on Lindale Road and the New Hope Grade School.

• The home site had a driveway about 100 yards long up to the top of a small knoll/hill that provided an ideal, soul-soothing view of the Shawnee Forest’s mountains looking to the south.

• Grandpa Ben became widely known for engaging community problems and offering sage advice.  Also, he was willing to lead to define both a solution to problems and a plan to implement the necessary/planned changes.  Grandpas was drawn, pulled into Republican politics.  He as calm, nice, with firm resolve to solve people’s problems…he never campaigned very much…and never lost and political post they chose for him.  He was clear in intent, focused on how to solve the problems, and gave the voters the honor for working together to solve their problems.

• Grandpa’s early recognition for being able to solve community political problems led to a BIG unexpected new job.  In May 1935, President Franklin D Roosevelt signed Executive Order 7037 to create the Rural Electrification Administration (REA) to bring lights and electrical power to the rural areas of America…to light the homes and barns and to pump the water to the houses and barns and livestock feeding stations…WOW!  Everyone wanted their house, business, farm, church, etc. to be the first served!  

 

Rather quickly the Saline County Leaders chose Benjamin David Gates as the new/first President of the Saline County REA org they later called the Southern Illinois Electric Cooperative (SIEC).  Can you just imagine the calls/contacts to try to persuade Ben Gates and his new team to do their property first?

 

Grandpa Gates wanted to:

• Make a difference

• Do the right thing

• Get-it-done well

• Always be fair and honest

 

Grandpa Gates was also playful and fun with his grandsons Richard, Jim, David, John Benjamin and Donald Gene Bramlet and granddaughter Betty Jean Bramlet.

 

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He also left indelible good marks on many good souls of both family and friends and neighbors.

 

He did however have some quirks, like coming to pick us grandsons up to take us to town for some “treats and play things” and would go to the smokehouse, lift up a floor plank, extract mason jar for food canning, but instead he would retrieve some dollar bills of the right level to “take us to town.”  Come to find out later, that he did this because of financial losses during the 1929-1939 Depression Era and 1941-1945 WWII.

 

This writer can attest to the fact that he was quite the teacher and prankster at the right time.  When Jim was about 5 or 6 he kept asking Grandpa Ben how his new one-wire, low height “electric wire” fence kept all his big cows and steers in the pasture, right where he wanted them to eat.  Grandpa said “electricity” was running through that wire and the animals would not touch it or it would teach them to stay back.  So, I volunteered to touch the wire to learn about electricity.  Grandpa cut me a milk weed with the sap flowing out.  I stood by Grandpa, dad and Richard and touched a juicy milkweed to the wire – WOW!!  I jumped up and fell on my back stunned and wet from knees to the bib on my overalls!  I learned, just like the cattle, to not touch an electrical wire.

 

Their son, Alvin, and his wife, Dora, moved out of the Ole Gates Place and into Grandpa Ben’s house when both he and Olive became sick and disabled late in life.