Andy Anderson was a giant among utility giants. Gentleman. Husband. Father. Still remembered and respected as the man who made a major impact on the use of live line tools for working on energized lines.
Anderson started as a lineman with Alabama Power in the 1930s. He joined the A.B. Chance Company in 1938 as the first Chance live line tool demonstrator. His travels in training lineman took him across the country and throughout the world. He was a "great communicator" and was noted for his ability to remember names of those he worked with years after even only casual introductions. Stories of Andy conducting training from the top of a pole and looking down at eager students and remembering names from his last training session that may have been years before abound. "Pulling" his Chance tool trailer, making presentations, showing movies and demonstrating the tools made Andy a welcome visitor and friend wherever he went. As Andy once put it, "I sold a whole shirttail full of tools."
Besides training, Andy brought his ideas back from the field and working with Chance engineers spearheaded the development of many tools and techniques still used today. Andy was especially proud that none of the thousands of lineman who learned from him ever was injured while working with him.
A testimony to the respect our industry has for Andy Anderson is that Andy may be gone but his name and stories about him still circulate within the industry even though he left the stage more than 30 years ago retiring from the A.B. Chance Company in 1975 as international product manager.
His tenure with Chance spanned 37 years. In 1983, Andy died after a long and productive life.
Andy will be remembered as a man whose main working challenge was to show lineman that live line maintenance could be done safely with the proper tools and established procedures.