Fred Kirkwood’s four-decade business story started as a love story.
Kirkwood, 65, could have had a long career with Walmart, or with Arkansas Best Freight.
But he had fallen for a college classmate when he was playing basketball and majoring in business administration and marketing at Central State University in Edmond, Oklahoma. His girlfriend, Carla, was from Roland, Oklahoma, just outside Fort Smith, and she liked it.
That settled things.
ABF offered Kirkwood a job, but he would have to work in Nashville, Tennessee, for a year before joining the home office in Fort Smith. In college, Kirkwood worked for Walmart and even met Sam Walton. He might have taken that career path, but Walmart’s headquarters is in Bentonville. Again, too far away.
So when Arkansas Oklahoma Gas offered Kirkwood a position in Fort Smith, he took it. AOG matched ABF’s salary offer, $19,500, and Kirkwood had a job for life. On Jan. 13 he retired after exactly 40 years with AOG and its recent parent company, Summit Utilities.
He and Carla have been married nearly 40 years. Their daughter, Jasmine, has twin 10-year-old girls, Alani and Siya.
“I’m from Memphis, and I came to Oklahoma on a basketball scholarship,” Kirkwood explained. “I met my girlfriend, who is my wife today. After college, we tried to stay in Memphis [where Kirkwood had a job at Pitney Bowes], but it was a little too fast for her. The day after ABF offered me a job, AOG called me for an interview. I chose AOG because I could get here sooner, to where my girlfriend was.
“I wasn’t thinking strategically, and I didn’t know anything about the gas business. But it turned out to be a really great decision.”
Fred Kirkwood Day
Kirkwood, his family and 250 admirers celebrated his career at a retirement party on Jan. 8, which Mayor George McGill declared Fred Kirkwood Day.
Arkansas Business sat down virtually with Kirkwood on Jan. 12, his next-to-last workday. He described big changes at the utility over 40 years, the joy of community work with the Fort Smith Boys & Girls Club, the United Way and others, and the blessing of having mentors.
“I’ve been incredibly fortunate to work alongside people who care deeply about one another, our customers and our communities,” he said. “I’m proud of what we’ve built together.”
His title at retirement was chief customer experience officer for Summit, a Colorado-based company that acquired AOG in 2017.
“I’ve got one more day, and tomorrow at 5 o’clock, that’ll be it for me,” Kirkwood said. “The best way to describe it is bittersweet. I’ve made it this far, and the experiences I’ve had were great, but I’m going to really miss what I do, and I’m going to miss the people I’ve worked with.”
When Kirkwood joined the company in January 1985, AOG served 60,000 customers and was owned by the Witt Stephens family. Its CEO was Emon A. Mahony Jr.
“Joining the Summit family put us at 100,000 customers, and then we acquired CenterPoint [in a $2.15 billion deal that closed in 2022], which brought it to 625,000.”
Evolving a Company
The company was far different 40 years ago, Kirkwood said. “It was more of a monopolistic sort of utility at that point. We had really low-cost gas, and we got it to customers, but there was no urgency to meet customer needs and demands or really focus on them.”
Over the years AOG benefited from what Summit called Kirkwood’s “infinite capacity for people.”
Kirkwood’s first assignment was to work with homebuilders, developers, homeowners and businesses interested in using natural gas. “My goal was to make sure they understood the benefits of using it, and then to work with our internal operations teams to make sure that we provided their services the way they needed.”
Over the years, the company’s mindset changed. “Our focus now is that folks don’t have to use natural gas,” Kirkwood said. “But we have an opportunity to show them the benefits, and to meet their needs through electronic payments, the use of technology and AI, and to work closely with large industrial customers. It’s just a more customer-focused and driven industry.”
Kirkwood described Mahony as an early and close mentor. “He gave me really good guidance on being a good person in the industry, but also a good person with an understanding of life itself.”
He also praised Summit’s CEO, Kurt Adams. “He pushed me to go beyond even what I dreamed about,” Kirkwood said of Adams, a former chair of the Maine Public Utilities Commission. “He really mentored me to understand that I had more to offer on a wider scale.”
Adams presented Kirkwood with Summit’s Bob Carroll Mentorship Award, which honors leadership development and a supportive growth-oriented culture. Kirkwood “has played a key role in modernizing customer service, strengthening community relationships and advancing operational excellence,” Adams said.
The Biggest Test
Nevertheless, Kirkwood had dark days, particularly after the CenterPoint acquisition, when billing errors and a spike in natural gas prices led to thousands of customer complaints.
A data processing failure led to 167,000 customers getting bills based on estimated rather than actual usage, and customers reported long wait times in trying to correct problems. The turmoil spurred the Arkansas Public Service Commission and the utility to temporarily suspend disconnections and late fees.
“That was the biggest struggle, because I was so used to delivering top-notch service,” Kirkwood recalled. “We had a period there where we couldn’t provide accurate information, and they couldn’t get to us when they needed to. And I can tell you my team would work from 6 in the morning to 9 o’clock at night trying to get every call answered. And nobody in the company was happy until we were able to correct those problems.”
Kirkwood plans to spend his retirement enjoying his family, doing some traveling and keeping the yard trim with his riding mower.
“I don’t golf, I don’t hunt, but I’ll cut the grass, and eventually do a little consulting with Summit, working with leaders interested in helping people grow their careers.”
His fondest memories?
“Working with the Fort Smith Boys & Girls Club, seeing them get into athletics, into education,” Kirkwood said. The high school forward who discovered in college that he was really a point guard will savor memories of his youth coaching and work with the United Way.
But his thoughts will also turn to colleagues, he said.
“I’ll remember just being with folks and watching what they go through. Getting married, having kids, losing loved ones. Just life itself with the people who I worked with for so many years.”
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