Publisher's Note: In light of the recent passing of former Mayor Joan Lamson on May 10, 2021, the following article is published out of sequence in the PKS mayor series. Be assured that the series will continue and the "skipped" mayors as well as the future mayors will be featured.
Joan E. Lamson
First 'elected' Mayor of Pine Knoll Shores
The newly formed town needed
structure and a way for residents to discuss town issues with town officials. By
charter, the board of commissioners is our governing body and our first mayor, James
W. Redfield, was chosen by his peers and served from 1973-1975. Since then, several
others have held the honor. You will find their bios and contributions in the mayor articles on this history blogspot.
In 1991, Mary Kanyha, the first woman
mayor, was chosen through the same process experienced by the previous mayors. That
method of choosing a mayor continued until 2002 when it was determined the town
needed more control over the various issues it was facing. And in a relatively
short period of time, we went from a board of commissioners’ chosen mayor to
our first elected mayor, Joan Lamson, who served from 2003– 2009.
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| Joan receives Leadership North Carolina's coveted Stanley Frank Class Award, a Waterford eagle, in June 2005 for her commitment to community and professional leadership. (The Shoreline, July 2005.) |
One of the first questions the History Committee asked Mayor Lamson when they interviewed her recently was “when did you first come to Bogue Banks and what brought you here?” She enjoys retelling the story. She and her husband, Wade Lamson, lived in Cleveland, Ohio at the time (1982) and annually vacationed in Ocracoke. That particular year, they planned to return home by way of Charlotte where Mr. Lamson was scheduled to attend a conference.
Mr. Lamson was adamant about driving
along the ocean on their way west. With
all the inlets cutting through our shoreline, ours is not a coastline that can
easily be hugged. As they wove their way in, out, over and around the many
inlets, bridges and ferries, whenever they could, they would turn left and
return to the ocean. As anyone who has
driven that route will attest to, it is a relatively slow, tedious drive and it
soon became apparent, they were not going to make it to Charlotte that night. When
they eventually arrived in Morehead City, Mr. Lamson promised his wife they
would cross just one more bridge, to the island called Bogue Banks and this
would be the last left turn as they would then follow the road running the full
length of the island, get off at the other end and head straight for Charlotte.
As they exited the old swing bridge
connecting to Atlantic Beach, they were not seeing the same thing. Ms. Lamson
saw a bar/t-shirt place, bar/t-shirt place, on and on. But with a huge grin and
“orange glow” (her words), Mr. Lamson said this was where they were going to
live. To that she responded, “Over my dead body.” But then, as they drove along
Salter Path Road, the landscape began to change and they came to something very
different, a lush maritime forest. The beauty and uniqueness of Pine Knoll
Shores engulfed them. As they drove around the town, Ms. Lamson began writing
down the names of realtors before continuing on their way to Charlotte and then
to Cleveland. Within 30 days, they had returned and bought their first piece of
paradise, a lot on which they built their home ten years later.
Fast forward, the Lamsons no longer
vacationed on Ocracoke but spent their vacations in town, making sure their lot
was still here, enjoying the benefits of membership in the country club and
eventually overseeing the building of their home that was completed in 1994.
Upon moving here, the Lamsons were
eager to become involved in community activities. At that time, the Pine Knoll
Shores emergency rescue squad was staffed by all volunteers. Mr. Lamson became
one of the volunteers and enjoyed his contributions to the squad and the town,
as did all volunteers. He was also elected to serve as a commissioner and did
so until his resignation in 2000.
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| Grandchildren visit Grandma Joan aka Mayor Lamson in her office at Town Hall. (The Shoreline, October 2005.) |
As the town continued to mature, one of the
many issues the town was dealing with was pressure from the commissioners to no
longer have a volunteer squad. Some of them felt that a paid squad would spend
more time at home base, and the town would have more control over the coming
and going of the volunteers. The commissioners wanted to throw out the by-laws
and rules of the volunteer squad, have them join as employees and pay them a
small stipend for their services. But the general feeling of many folks was
that they were not being well treated and perhaps saw the stipend as an insult
to the rescue workers who had been serving out of pure love for the town and
its people. The commissioners would not listen to the leader of the volunteer
squad who tried unsuccessfully to represent the grievances of the squad. Fifteen
members of the squad quit, and at a time when there was a growing shortage of
volunteers, something had to be done. How did Ms. Lamson get involved in this
minor insurrection?
Ms. Lamson had an extensive
background in corporate affairs. She had been born and raised in Denver,
Colorado, began her education at the University of Denver and had three
children while living there. She had relocated to Huntsville, Alabama with her
then Aerospace engineering husband and eventually moved to Cleveland. Her background
in industrial sales led to her founding a metal finishing company in Cleveland
that she owned and operated for 20 years. At the time, she also received her
MBA from Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland.
Knowing of her track record in her
past business operations, one of the rescue volunteers called her and asked for
her help. Since Ms. Lamson had been a small business owner, she had a
background in labor relations and negotiations dealing with such issues, so she
was able to secure a meeting with one of the commissioners, to no real success
in resolving the issues on the table.
One of the great things about Pine
Knoll Shores is the involvement of its citizens. The town has attracted a vast
number of individuals from other areas with varied backgrounds, skills and
educational levels who are not shy about asking the why questions and always
eager to come up with solutions. It was understandable then that many town
people, being aware of the impasse, stepped forward and asked why our
commissioners did not have term limits. The answer to that is simply that term
limits are not permissible at the municipality level in North Carolina.
Not to allow this to end the quest
for a solution to the matter, the town citizens, searching for a resolution to the
emergency rescue squad issue, turned to Ms. Lamson again asking whether the
mayor could be an elected official, no more allowing the commissioners to pick
one of their own to serve as mayor. When the answer to that was affirmative,
the logical follow-up to Ms. Lamson was, “How do we do that?” She was well
versed in the process and told them what they would have to do to accomplish
their goal. The citizens would have to file a petition, get it on the ballot
and have a referendum to change the form of local government to an elected
mayor-council form.
And that is how the change came about. During
the two years the process took to finalize this significant change in our form
of government, many began questioning who they should put up to run on this
first ballot. All conversations circled back around to Ms. Lamson. She had so
much invested in this great endeavor, she couldn’t refuse the request to run.
Mayor Lamson was a born leader, and she found
a great support team at the League of Municipalities in Raleigh where workshops
are offered that are designed to provide municipal leaders with the knowledge
and skills necessary to govern. It is where mayors and commissioners go to get
educated.
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| Mayor Lamson, former Mayor Mary Kanyha, and Commissioner Bob Danehy attend the NC League of Municipalities annual conference in October 2004. (The Shoreline, December 2004.) |
Upon taking office, Mayor Lamson was
faced with the ongoing battle previous mayors had worked very hard on while
trying to negotiate the purchase of the company that provided the town with its
water. The company was located near Chicago, owned by a company in the
Netherlands that had been purchased by a hedge fund in New York. It was not
surprising that monthly water bills were rapidly increasing. In anticipation of
buying the water company, the town administration had applied for and received
a loan from the NC Department of Agriculture for that purpose.
The town had three options: buy the existing
water company; build a totally new duplicate system parallel to the existing,
with new pipes, wells, towers and all the rest that goes with it; or give up,
stop the process and close off the town’s access to the loan. It seemed to Mayor
Lamson that it made sense to buy the existing company and price it based on whatever
repairs would be required to be made to the aging infrastructure. The town was
able to get several appraisals from knowledgeable people and proceeded in their
mission. Mayor Lamson took a
commissioner and one town citizen with a background in water systems in another
town with her to Chicago and ‘knuckled it out’ with Carolina Water.
Mayor Lamson knew how to negotiate price. Part
of the deal they struck was for us to keep the operator, Sonny Cunningham, who
to this day serves the town extremely well. Mayor Lamson is very proud of their
success in finalizing the purchase of the water company. It was undeniably quite
an accomplishment.
About that time, it was well noted
that the town’s beaches were losing sand. When the county turned down the
town’s request for aid to replenish the sand on our beaches, it was decided we
would have to go it alone and we did. As
so often happens in Pine Knoll Shores, concerned citizens come together to
discuss an issue bringing with them their intellect, past experience and
personal power to identify the problem and the solution. In this matter, they created
the Pine Knoll Shores Beach Preservation Association. Mayor Lamson believes our
success in large part was due to our relationship with the incredibly knowledgeable
Rudi Rudolph, whose background has lent itself to a sustainable beach
preservation program from a scientific and engineering perspective. The Pine
Knoll Shores Beach Preservation Association grew to encompass the entire island,
becoming the Bogue Banks Beach Preservation Association which has now become
the County Beach Commission. We have been a model to other beach communities
and have put in place a 50-year plan that basically guarantees us the ability
to nourish our beaches when needed.
Many significant projects were on
the drawing board during Mayor Lamson’s tenure, not the least being her
decision, along with the commissioners, to change the town’s form of town government.
With the many changes occurring in town and demands upon the town staff
continuing to grow, the quickly expanding daily operations had become too much for
our commissioners to oversee. It was time to hire a town manager. Mayor Lamson
initiated the process of converting the town to a council-manager form of
government. When Brian Kramer walked in for his interview, there was no doubt
in anyone’s mind that he was the man for the job. The mayor and the
commissioners now set policy, and the manager implements their policies
including hiring and firing of employees.
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| Mayor Lamson, Marlene Anderson, Mary Sue Noe at the League of Women Voters reception, August 25, 2004. (Carteret News-Times.) |
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| (The Shoreline, October 2012.) |
During her time in office, Mayor Lamson made other contributions vital to the smooth functioning of the town. She was responsible for writing a cash management policy for the town and updated our land use plan and the town’s OSHA files, which had not been done in ten years. She enjoyed her role in maintaining our relationships with the state legislature, county government and the other municipalities on Bogue Banks and continued to serve the community and county in many ways after her time in office.
Mayor Lamson was proud to be the face and the voice of Pine Knoll Shores at a time of much change. She shares her significant success with town initiatives with the hard-working commissioners who served with her.
The town is fortunate that a series of left turns and Mr. Lamson’s insistence to take just one more left turn when they arrived in Morehead City, led the Lamsons and the town’s future first elected mayor to Pine Knoll Shores.
_______________________
Post Author: Kathy Werle, with assistance of Ted
Lindblad’s oral history interview, July 2019.
Published in The
Shoreline, September 2020.