The Southern Shores Civic Assn. will hold a volunteer and membership open house on Monday (3/27), from noon to 4 p.m., in the Pitts Center behind Town Hall. The event will provide an opportunity for people to learn about SSCA membership, spring and summer volunteer work for the association, and the SSCA itself.
The SSCA is an unusual organization of property owners in that it is not comprised exclusively of homeowners and its membership is not mandatory. Membership dues in part support a legion of volunteers who maintain many of the benefits of living in Southern Shores.
The SSCA is a major landowner in Southern Shores: Its holdings include the 33 beach access/dune crossovers, the town’s boat marinas and parks (except Chicahauk’s Trinitie Park), the Hillcrest Beach and parking lot, the Hillcrest Tennis Court, and a number of large tracts of vacant land.
The SSCA will hold its next general membership meeting on Monday, April 10, at 7 p.m., in the Pitts Center. Monday’s open house will give you a chance to ask board members in an informal setting about the SSCA budget, priorities, projects, etc., as well as how you can participate in its many activities, if you’d like.
For more information about the open house, contact coordinator@sscaobx.org.
Despite impressions otherwise, The Beacon is still on hiatus with no definite plans to resume reporting, although we are aware that the Town Council will soon be discussing a property tax hike and expect to cover that news.
A SPOT OF HISTORY
Since we made an exception for the SSCA’s open house and are “on the page,” so to speak, we thought we would pass along some Southern Shores history.
It occurred to us that newcomers to town, of whom the recent housing boom would suggest there are many, may not know the name, Kern P. Pitts, that adorns our town meeting center.
If you were here in the 1980s and 1990s, you probably recognize the name as synonymous with Southern Shores in that era. Everyone who was here then knew Kern Pitts.
Mr. Pitts was the first elected mayor of Southern Shores—but he was not elected mayor by the people. He was elected by popular vote in November 1979 as a member of the Town Council and then chosen mayor by a vote of the five-member Town Council.
The Town did not hold mayoral elections until 2001, when voters elected Rear Admiral Paul E. Sutherland Jr. (1932-2017), who had been serving as the Council-designated mayor. Until the 2001 election, the Town Council chose the mayor, a system that the Town of Duck, which was incorporated in 2002, still employs today. (Hence, Duck Mayor Don Kingston has been entrenched in office since 2011.)
The November 1979 election was the first election held in newly incorporated Southern Shores. David Stick, the son of the founder of Southern Shores, artist and real estate developer Frank Stick, and Southern Shores’ chief planner/designer/visionary, served by appointment as town mayor until Mr. Pitts was sworn into office.
Mr. Pitts, a retired colonel in the U.S. Army, held the mayor’s office from 1979 until 1997, when he left Southern Shores for health reasons to be near family in Texas. He died in 2000 at age 80.
Don Smith succeeded Admiral Sutherland as mayor, followed by Hal Denny (2009-2013), Tom Bennett for two four-year terms, and now Elizabeth Morey, who was elected in 2021.
This year voters of Southern Shores will elect three people to the Town Council, as the terms of Leo Holland and Matt Neal, who were elected in 2019, and Mark Batenic, who was appointed in 2022 to complete the Town Council term Ms. Morey was serving when she was elected mayor, are scheduled to expire.
The terms of the other two Town Council members—Mayor Morey and Councilwoman Paula Sherlock—will expire in 2025.
And that’s your Southern Shores history lesson for the day.
Ann G. Sjoerdsma, 3/23/23
The Southern Shores Beacon 
Ann, thanks for the blurb about my Dad! I
LikeLike
You’re welcome, Diane. Thanks for writing. Your father was an important person in Southern Shores for many years. He deserves more recognition.
LikeLike