LBJ knew exactly what he was doing. And generations of young people are the better for it.

Lyndon Baines Johnson was a U.S. senator in 1957 when he addressed the annual meeting of the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association and told co-ops they should send youngsters to Washington, D.C., “where they can actually see what the flag stands for and represents.”

The Electric Cooperative Youth Tour was born. Some Texas co-ops sent teenagers to work in Johnson’s office, while an electric co-op in Iowa sponsored the first large group of 34 youths to travel to the nation’s capital a week of immersion in government.

Today, the tradition continues. Co-op youths across Virginia, Maryland and Delaware are eligible to be a part of a tour that’s changed the lives of nearly 50,000 young people.