This profile is part of a series where we recognize our heritage team members. After 35 years of service at Peoples Gas, Mike Farmer is retiring at the end of the month to spend more time with his non-work family.
With a degree from Montana Tech in Petroleum Engineering, internships with petroleum companies in California, followed by eight years at Okaloosa Gas District in Fort Walton Beach, Florida, it’s safe to say Mike Farmer brought extensive gas transmission system design and system modeling experience to Peoples Gas when he joined the team as a staff engineer in 1989. Over time, he was promoted to manager of Engineering and assumed additional responsibilities for Environmental and Safety.
When TECO Energy bought Peoples Gas in 1997, Mike was promoted to director of Engineering, Environmental and Safety. When an opportunity arose to go back into Operations, he became the general manager of Utility Operations of what was then the Tampa Bay Region and eventually the director of Operations.
In 2005, he was named the director of Customer Service, responsible for the call center and overall customer experience. “This was one of the most challenging, but also most rewarding, positions I have had during my career,” said Mike. “I am still amazed at what a wonderful job our front-line team members do for our customers.”
He was called back to his roots in Corporate Engineering in 2007, addressing the need to support growth in the Jacksonville area and a project to serve natural gas to Tampa Electric’s H.L. Culbreath Bayside Power Station.
“Working closely with the Operations, Fuels and Business Development teams, we evaluated and constructed many large, impactful projects that have fundamentally changed how our systems operate to provide long-term capacity to customers, system reliability and upstream supply,” Mike reflected. “How we managed to grow the Jacksonville system over time to meet these needs is a tribute to the team we have in Corporate Engineering.”
Many large projects would follow, including overseeing the engineering for the 30-inch steel SeaCoast Gas Transmission project linking Florida Gas Transmission to the Seminole Electric Plant near Palatka. But Mike is quick to point out that these large projects aren’t his source of pride. Instead, he talks about the opportunity to support dozens of team members he hired who went on to build their own careers at Peoples Gas. “The team I’m leaving behind is doing a great job, they are the future of Peoples Gas.”
Mike hopes that he has been equally successful in his focus on family. “Around the company it’s been a running joke to keep track of how many grandchildren I have. It’s 17 and growing,” he noted. When he retires at the end of the month, Mike is planning extended visits “until they are tired of me” with his three daughters in North Carolina. Marissa is just finishing up her RN degree and has the largest family with seven children. Shelly is pursuing a degree in social work and has four children. Keri recently completed her Master of Arts in New Testament and is a minister with two children.
Closer to home, his only son Alex is pursuing a Ph.D. in Physics at the University of South Florida (USF), and his daughter Jayce, who is married to Matt Elliott, manager of Regulatory Affairs, is about to receive her Doctor of Nursing Practice degree from the University of Florida (UF) and has three children. Mike plans to join her for a celebratory hike across Yellowstone in September. Anna, his youngest, is at USF pursuing work in children’s ministry. Mike supports USF and UF, but his loyalty will always be to the University of Alabama.
And then there are Mike’s four-legged family members, Labradors Mocha and Maggie. When he graduated from high school and was mapping out his career, he thought he might become a veterinarian and is still considering getting a Veterinary Technician degree. He loves dogs. He’s proud to share that his wife Teresa has placed 40 dogs into good homes through her volunteer work at Labrador Rescue of Florida.
Mike and Teresa plan to travel extensively and expect there will be many adventures in the future. Wish them well in the comments section below.
Looking back at Mike’s time with Peoples Gas: portraits from 1999 and 2020, field at the Cypress-Ford Road Project; a 2020 portrait, inspecting the pipe for a major extension project near Jacksonville in 2018, a team event at Tampa Bay Downs
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