Lake Gaston Association Executive Director

The LGA added the Executive Director position to its staff on July 1, 2005. It is the only paid LGA position, part time at 20 hours/week, and was established primarily to provide continuity of effort and resident expertise for the Board of Directors who, as volunteers, experience considerable turnover.

Moira Underwood has held the Executive Director position since its inception and is considered the glue that holds the organization together on a daily basis.

Early into her tenure, she established a permanent LGA office in the Town Center in Littleton, NC giving the LGA its first ever base of operations. From there, she is effectively able to respond to queries and concerns from members and other lake property owners, as well as administer her many other duties and responsibilities. She was also able to eliminate the need for a separate Communications Committee by assuming responsibility for publication of the bi-monthly LGA Bulletin, oversight of the organization’s web site, and providing timely communication with the LGA’s members through pertinent emails, letters, a monthly newspaper column, and numerous public service announcements.

Additional duties include oversight of the membership data base, preparation and mailing of member renewal letters and reminders, preparation and mailing of solicitations for new members using county tax listings, preparation of displays for use at meetings and area festivals, development and administration of member surveys, and administrative and advisory support of the LGA Board and its Committees. The Executive Director reports directly to the President in the execution of her duties. She may be reached (252) 586-6577 or toll free at 1-888-586-6577, or at email address execdir@lakegastonassoc.com or info@lakegastonassoc.com.
Moira was born and raised in England, where she met her husband Jack at her work location at IBM’s Hursley Laboratory. They subsequently married, and she emigrated to the US in 1982 as Jack returned from assignment. They continued their careers with IBM in Raleigh. Both worked with colleagues who talked (especially Monday mornings) about their weekend homes on Lake Gaston. Moira saw the movie ‘On Golden Pond’ and she had to see Lake Gaston. They became weekenders in 1983, full-timers in 1995 and Moira joined Jack in retirement.

A year later with time on her hands Moira answered an ad for a columnist with The Littleton Observer, a weekly newspaper in Littleton. After two columns, she took the offer to become a reporter, and started her second career! Besides writing her column, news and feature stories, covering bake sales etc, her duties included typing copy, laying out the newspaper on boards with wax, and subsequently becoming editor of the newspaper. She was enjoying a second retirement when the LGA opportunity presented itself.

Moira has been a performer at Lakeland Theater Company, Mosby Ave., Littleton since 1997; has had a weekly radio program called “Moments with Moira” on 90.1 & 90.5 FM since 2000 thanks to her air sponsor Lake Gaston Supply; volunteers at the John 3:16 Center as the after school piano and guitar teacher; and when she met Jack in England, Moira was still competing in track and field events – discus and shot put.

From the Desk of the Executive Director...
 

It just seemed like only last month when I put pen to paper and wrote my longest ever From the Desk of article that took a whole page in our February/March 2019 LGA Bulletin. Mother Nature has not eased up on us - our whole country seems to be experiencing historic/horrific weather patterns.

The following year we did build a home, several years later we added on to the house because we decided to move to the lake permanently. And we had two boat docks, one for my husband’s fishing boat and one for the pontoon boat. I remember Lake Gaston being drawn down in 1988 (I believe it had to do with hydrilla being really bad at that time) to where we had no water at all in our part of the cove and on the main lake the water receded from the banks, but on the bright side we were able to apply to Dominion for permission to move a couple of stumps from the floor of the lake from when Lake Gaston 'was made.'

At our March 6 LGA monthly meeting Corey Chamberlain from Dominion Energy gave us a very informative presentation on Lake Gaston & Roanoke Rapids Operations, as well as the statistics of water coming into Kerr Lake and explained the need for going into Flood Control status. Here is the link to the presentation..

From time to time we receive requests from our members to have an additional email address in their membership record. We only have room for one email per record and we ask the requesting member to ask their spouse to forward them the LGA email. It’s not a case of adding space to the membership record for a second email address, it’s a case of the volume of email addresses that that would mean. At one email address per record we are around 1,900 emails and growing. There are rules that govern bulk email lists, I can’t just hit send and all 1,900 emails go at once. We have to use a mail server to spread out the delivery of those emails so LGA emails make it to your inbox vs. spam. We thank you for your understanding.

In preparation for summer we have two great presentations that were given at one of our LGA monthly meetings by Tony Moran (our Marketing & Membership chair) - “Snakes Around the Lake Area” in 2017 and “Dangerous Spiders Around Lake Gaston” in 2018. Here are the links:

Moira