Jo Conn Guild

Josephus Conn Guild, Jr. (December 15, 1887–June 26, 1969) was an American businessman and engineer from Chattanooga, Tennessee. As president of the Tennessee Electric Power Company (TEPCO), he became one of the staunchest and most outspoken opponents of the newly formed Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) in the 1930s. With the help of attorney Wendell Willkie, Guild waged a legal battle that questioned the constitutionality of TVA, culminating in a U.S. Supreme Court case dismissal that forced TEPCO to sell its assets to the new federal agency.

Working for his father's Chattanooga and Tennessee River Power Company as a young engineer in the early 1900s, Guild helped build Hales Bar Dam, the first dam on the main channel of the Tennessee River and the first hydroelectric dam on a navigable channel in the United States. After his father's death, he helped the company expand, eventually merging it with several other companies to form TEPCO in 1922.

Guild attended the Baylor School (his father was a friend of the school's founder) from 1897 to 1905, after which he received technical training at the University of Virginia and studied engineering at Vanderbilt.

TEPCO and TVA

After receiving his engineering degree in 1909, Guild joined his late father's company and aided in the completion of Hales Bar Dam. The dam went into operation in November 1913, after which the title was turned over to the federal government, with Chattanooga & Tennessee Power retaining rights to the power generation profits for 99 years. Blue Ridge Dam, which was advanced enough to require just six employees for its operations, was completed in the early 1930s by a TEPCO subsidiary. In 1933, Guild was selected as TEPCO's president. TEPCO and several other private firms sued TVA, challenging the agency's constitutionality. The private utilities were represented by Wendell Willkie (Willkie's Commonwealth & Southern Corporation owned interests in several of the power firms) and Newton D. Baker, while TVA was represented by attorneys James Lawrence Fly and John Lord O'Brian. The federal district court ruled in favor of the private utilities, but the decision was overturned by the Court of Appeals in early 1938. The private utilities appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, which dismissed the suit in January 1939, claiming the utilities lacked standing. On August 15, 1939, TEPCO sold its assets to TVA for $78 million. The company was purchased by the Chattanooga Area Regional Transportation Authority in 1973.

Guild owned a large house on Lookout Mountain, and even in his later years, it was not uncommon to see Guild driving down the mountain in one of his custom-made sports cars. Guild also owned a cattle and hog farm near Columbia, Tennessee, where he cured hams and sausages using old family recipes. Guild married his first wife, Sarah Nichols, in 1912, and they had one daughter, Virginia (1915–2001). Guild died on June 26, 1969, and is buried in the Forest Hills Cemetery.