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Leadership skills a common thread
Two past presidents and a longtime treasurer honored for their decades of dedication and service to the PNGA
By Paul Ramsdell, PNGA Media
Three individuals who have been leaders as the Pacific Northwest Golf Association has evolved the past two decades, as well as celebrated a centennial, have been named the Distinguished Service Award winners for 2006.
Past presidents Lynda Adams and Chuck Gage, and Robin Anderson, who has served as the treasurer of the PNGA for the past 10 years, will be honored at the association's annual meeting April 21-22 at Royal Colwood Golf Club in Victoria, B.C.
"This group has certainly contributed to the depth and the continuity of the PNGA over the last 15 or 20 years," said M.G. Davis, the current president of the PNGA.
"They have, individually and collectively, added so much, they are, in fact, the PNGA over the last 15 or 20 years," Davis added.
Because of their continuous service, all three have been involved as Davis has come up through the ranks of the Board of Directors and the Executive Committee to his spot as president today.
"I have a lot of admiration and affection for all of those folks," Davis said.
Adams was the first woman president of the PNGA, holding that role in 2000-2002. Adams has been a club representative to the PNGA initially from Grays Harbor (Wash.) Country Club and more recently from Olympia (Wash.) Country and Golf Club since 1984. She has been on the PNGA Board of Directors since 1991 and served as the PNGA Secretary from 1993 to 2000.
Adams still remembers attending her first PNGA committee meeting 20 years ago.
"I went to the first, at Seattle Golf Club, and was totally excited, absolutely excited," she said. "I came home and told Jerry (her husband), this is what I want to do because it was a gathering together of people who were really interested in golf, the game, the camaraderie and the political aspects of it, and the integrity of the game and the rules, and I was just gung-ho from then on."
One of her major accomplishments as president, she said, was revamping and making more equitable the annual dues structure throughout the PNGA region, which engulfs British Columbia, Washington, Oregon and Idaho.
The fact she was the first woman president of the association that was beginning its second century under her command never was an issue, she said.
"I didn't have any gender problems," she said. "I felt a lot of support. Of course, you can't go wrong when you've got the staff the PNGA has, and I can't say enough about the people who serve on the Board of Directors, all of them are dedicated to every issue."
Davis was impressed with Adams' dedication as president.
"Lynda was basically my mentor," Davis said. "It was under her reign that I became aware that some day I might be asked (to be president), so I started paying attention. She had very definite goals for the association, and what she wanted to accomplish; and she accomplished a majority of those."
While Adams welcomed the PNGA into its second century as the guardian of the game of golf in the Northwest, Gage closed out the PNGA's first century.
Gage, of Vancouver, B.C., and a member at Shaughnessy Golf & Country Club, served as the president of the PNGA in 1998-1999, and served on the Board of Directors from 1989-2000.
The first president of the PNGA, C.B. Stahlschmidt, was from Victoria, B.C.
"On our 100th anniversary, we also had a president from B.C., and I thought that was very apropos," Davis said.
As president during the PNGA's centennial year, Gage oversaw the Centennial Gala that was held at the Paramount Theater in Seattle, as well as the publishing of the PNGA's history book, "Championships & Friendships," and the Centennial Matches against the Western Pennsylvania Golf Association, which was celebrating its centennial as well.
"It's something I think about over and over again, quite frankly," Gage said of the PNGA's birthday celebration.
"It was just spectacular all the way through, and all the behind-the-scene things," he said.
"It was a huge honor to be there, so I wanted to make sure it was right."
Gage, as Adams and Anderson, began his service to the PNGA as a club representative, starting in 1988.
"I'm absolutely thrilled to be on the same stage with the two of them," he said of being honored with Adams and Anderson.
"To be included is like a thorn between two roses."
Anderson joined Adams, a friend since childhood, as a club representative to the PNGA in 1987. Representing Ellensburg (Wash.) Golf Course, Anderson became part of the Board of Directors in 1993. In 1996, she became the PNGA's treasurer, a position she continues to hold.
"Robin Anderson is one of those real powerful people who prefer to do their work kinda behind the scenes," Davis said. "She's a successful businesswoman, and she monitored and guided the finances of the PNGA as treasurer for as long as I've been around."
It's been a time Anderson has enjoyed.
"It's just been kind of a fun thing that Lynda and I have been doing together it turns out to be 20 years now," Anderson said.
"Working together with all the neat people on the Board has been wonderful."
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