As it turns out, there is exactly one electrician in the U.S. House of Representatives, and viewers will see him in action during one of next season’s This Old House episodes chronicling the renovation of a Jamestown, RI, house.
Representative Donald Norcross, of New Jersey, recently visited the Jamestown project, and worked alongside electrician Ben Giles, of Rhode Island’s South Shore Electrical Contractors, and a group of high school seniors from Chariho Tech, a vocational high school that is part of the Chariho Regional School District, serving Charlestown, Richmond, and Hopkinton, RI.
The conversation that transpired in a roughed-in second-floor room was an inspiration to the students, who took advantage of the opportunity to hear firsthand about careers in the electrical trades. Congressman Norcross explained that he’d worked for 17 years as a journeyman electrician on industrial and commercial sites. “There are so many options for you as you learn the trade and set out to work as an electrician, with all the solar, communications, fiber optic, and other types of electrical work today,” said the congressman, who was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 2014. “There’s plenty of demand for the skilled trades, and you never know where it might take you—even to Washington, D.C.!”
