“I’ve got big boots to fill, but I’m looking forward to it,” said Sharpe, a member of Chattanooga, Tenn., Local 721.

A native of South Pittsburg, Tenn., Sharpe studied theater and speech at the University of Tennessee-Chattanooga, where he learned carpentry while working in the theater department’s set shop. He spent a few years afterward in an apprenticeship with a pipe organ builder.

“I enjoy working with my hands. I always have,” he said.

In 1993, Sharpe — by then a 25-year-old father of two young children — shifted his career plans and accepted a Local 721-represented coal operations job with the Widows Creek generating plant in neighboring Alabama.

“I’ve always had an interest in the IBEW,” Sharpe said. He noted that his uncle Bill, a former business manager of New Johnsonville, Tenn., Local 1749, had worked with Jerry Duncan, one of Sharpe’s international representative predecessors and a former Local 1749 business manager himself.

The now-decommissioned Widows Creek plant was part of the Tennessee Valley Authority, the sprawling, government-owned corporation that brought electricity and flood control to the seven states served by the Tennessee River and its tributaries. The IBEW has represented workers at the TVA since the agency’s founding in 1933.

“When I hired into TVA, I had a union referral from Jerry, and that helped me get involved,” said Sharpe, who quickly became active with Local 721 as a job steward. “Having that history of unionism, making sure that people are represented and treated fairly in the workplace, was always important for me.”

Sharpe steadily rose through the TVA’s ranks, eventually becoming a senior operator with the agency’s Raccoon Mountain pumped-storage facility in 2004. Three years later, he was elected Local 721’s vice president, an office he held until his 2011 election as president.

“Curtis was always including me in a lot of stuff so I could learn,” said Local 721 Business Manager David Williams, who served for several years as Sharpe’s vice president.

“Curtis is a really good problem solver. He’s a thinker. He’s going to do a good job. He’s all IBEW.”

_{– Retired Tenth District International Vice President Brent Hall}

Williams recalled being asked to accompany Sharpe on a trip to Little Rock, Ark., to learn more about arbitration.

“He’s very knowledgeable,” said the business manager, adding that he and Sharpe remain friends outside of work. “We hang out a lot, go different places, and play some golf every now and then.”

In 2018, then-International President Lonnie R. Stephenson announced a major partnership with the TVA to bring the IBEW’s Code of Excellence to the entire organization. The Code aims to forge among workers and managers alike a commitment to its SPARQ values: safety, professionalism, accountability, relationships and quality.

“IVP Hall asked me if I would be interested in leading the union’s side of the Code of Excellence group,” said Sharpe, who eagerly agreed. Soon, he was identifying trainers who would help him conduct Code classes for the organization’s 5,000 workers, including members of six other labor unions.

“I think in one year, Curtis put about 30,000 miles on a vehicle, traveling the valley and changing TVA culture,” said Will Trumm, the agency’s chief administrative officer and Sharpe’s management counterpart. “Curtis spoke for every union across the TVA, not just the IBEW.”

The pair have known each other since Sharpe’s days at Raccoon Mountain. “Curtis is a man of his word,” Trumm said. “He’s a strategic thinker, a business partner, and he sees the big picture.”

Thanks in large part to cooperation from the TVA’s managers, Sharpe said, the Code of Excellence rollout was completed in five months, and regular Code training has taken place ever since.

“It was probably the highlight of my time at TVA,” Sharpe said. “I think the Code has had some great effects, in safety, in relationships and in the quality of work. We moved our relationship forward, and we continue to benefit from that today.”

In 2019, Stephenson appointed Sharpe to be an international representative for the Tenth District, which spans Arkansas, Tennessee and the Carolinas. Among Sharpe’s responsibilities in his new role was working with International Representative Charles Rains to service the more than a dozen IBEW locals that represent the union’s members covered by the general agreement with the TVA.

Sharpe said one highlight of his time in the district office was when the IBEW successfully organized the TVA’s nuclear security officers and chartered Chattanooga Local 911 in 2020.

“There’s a lot of external pressures on the TVA and on unions in general right now,” said Sharpe, who still serves on the agency’s Code of Excellence Core Committee and its Health and Safety Committee. “But focusing on how we work together day-to-day and ensuring that we do things as best and as safely as possible keeps us from being distracted by those forces.”

Sharpe lives in his hometown of South Pittsburg, about a half-hour drive west of Chattanooga. His wife, Shannon Pickering, works in political campaigns. His son, Jacob, lives in Washington, while his daughter, Trenna, and her wife, Alice, live in London.

The kids’ distance from southeast Tennessee is not a problem for Sharpe and his wife. “We like to travel,” he said, “and that gives us an opportunity to go places — when we have the time.”

Sharpe also likes music and going to shows, and he still uses his woodworking experience on home improvement projects.

“We live in a house built in 1930,” he said. “We completely gutted it and built a modern addition.”

Sharpe’s father and mother — 92 and 83, respectively — live across the street. “One of my other hobbies is spending with them when I can and making sure everything’s good and they’re doing well,” he said.

As Sharpe assumes the office of international vice president, he hopes to follow the example set by Hall.

“Something that I’ve admired about Brent is his willingness to try something new to make the IBEW better,” Sharp said. “He continued to grow the district. A big thing for me has been learning what it takes to do that.”

Sharpe also is proud of his friendship with Hall. “Sometimes it’s just about being there and not needing something, just hanging out,” he said.

Hall said Sharpe’s background as a TVA coal plant operator will serve him well in his new position.

“My experience is operators tend to be very detail-oriented,” Hall said. “You have to be. You’re controlling some expensive equipment.

“Curtis is a really good problem solver. He’s a thinker,” Hall added. “He’s going to do a good job. He’s all IBEW.”

Williams agreed. “Curtis will think of the members first,” he said. “Everything he does will be for them.”

Sharpe also will continue to fight for what’s right, Trumm said. “I work with 17 different union leaders,” he said. “There’s no one in the labor field that I respect more than Curtis Sharpe.”

Please join the Brotherhood in wishing Brother Sharpe success in his new role.