“It’s our problem, and we’ll stay here until it’s fixed,” he told the crowd.

It was the kind of leadership that employees, customers, and the community had come to expect from Derrick. Whether he was running Pepco, heading the United Way campaign, or chairing the Greater Washington Board of Trade, Derrick could be counted on to keep his commitments and his word.

A native Washingtonian who met his wife, Linda, in junior high school, Derrick followed cousins to Duke University and studied electrical engineering. He graduated in 1961, married Linda, and came home to work for Pepco. Aside from a three-year stint in Charleston, South Carolina, in the Navy’s Civil Engineer Corps, Derrick has stayed close to home and to Pepco ever since.

The Navy gave Derrick his first taste of leadership. Along with his other duties, the 22-year-old lieutenant was assigned to run the officers’ club. Other young officers couldn’t wait to pass this duty onto someone else, but Derrick loved it. “I had my own instant business – doing inventory, ordering, hiring bartenders,” he says.

The experience gave him an appreciation for managing people as well as machinery.

Derrick rose through the ranks at Pepco, becoming CEO in 1997. He managed the merger between Pepco and Connectiv, becoming chair and CEO of the combined company, Pepco Holdings, Inc., in 2002. It serves 1.8 million customers in four states and the District.

When he retired earlier this year, Derrick could look back on more than 40 years of service to the company and to the community. A man of strong faith, Derrick always acted on the belief that “we are only stewards of what we have, and we should be good stewards.”

As Pepco’s good steward, he kept the lights on in the nation’s capital and worked to make the whole community brighter for all of its citizens.