Local senior men’s organization in search of new members
By James Kmosko
The Catawbans, a local senior organization for retired and semi-retired men, is in search of new members.
The organization, known for its many interest groups, networking opportunities, and strong hyper-local presence, has been active in Catawba and Lincoln counties for over fifteen years.
The Catawbans’ story began with a women’s club known as The Newcomers, an organization for women who moved to the Lake Norman area and wanted to make new connections and friends.
The organization, still active to this day, brought together the husbands of many of these women, including Mike McKinley, who in the early 2000s had recently moved to the area.
“Some of the guys got together, and we decided we’d play a little round of golf,” said Mike. “And we ended up forming a club called the Golden Boys.”
The Golden Boys, officially the Central Lake Norman Golden Boys, was founded in 2002 with 18 members.
“We had our first few breakfasts at Stacy’s out in Denver,” Mike said. “It was that small. A few of us went. But as it grew, more and more people from the other side of the lake joined the Golden Boys.”
Mike said that, within a few years, the Golden Boys grew to over 400 members. This, he said, made logistics and club functions more difficult.
“We would come over [to the east side of the lake] to go golfing and to come to the meetings and the breakfasts,” Mike said. “So when we were doing that one day, I said, ‘We’ve got to form our own club on [the west side of the lake]. There were four or five of us, and we thought, well, that’d be a good idea.”
Not long afterwards, the small group began planning a new organization, which eventually became known as The Catawbans. But first, the new organization needed a place to meet.
“Back in those days, there wasn’t much on that side of the lake,” Mike said. “One day I was down in the Denver area, and I was driving by Captain Pete’s, and I just pulled in there, and I said, ‘I know you don’t do breakfast, but if we could get 50 guys to come to breakfast, would you serve breakfast?’ ‘Sure,’ they said. So we had found a meeting place.”
The group recruited members from the Golden Boys to join the new organization.
“We put out an email to all the Golden Boys and said, ‘We’re going to have a second club. We aren’t going to disband the Golden Boys. We’re going to have a second club,’” Mike said.
Mike became the Catawbans’ first president ahead of the group’s first meeting. He suggested that the group’s logo be the image of a Heron.
“On the lake every day, a Heron would come on my dock,” Mike said. “So when we had our meetings, I said, you know, we got to have some sort of a symbol. Well, we’re in Catawba County. We’re the Catawbans and we’ll have the Heron as our symbol, because they’re on the lake all the time.”
When the organization finally had its first meeting, it was a resounding and unexpected success.
“When we had our first breakfast at Captain Pete’s, 107 people showed up,” Mike said. “That was it.”
The Catawbans was officially established in March of 2009. Fearing that the organization would face the same logistical problems as the Golden Boys, the founders decided to limit the membership of the organization.
“The Golden Boys was getting too big, and we didn’t know everybody,” Mike said. “So we wanted to have something where we are friendly, and have small groups. That’s why we decided to limit [membership] to 100 people.”
After some experimentation, the organization settled on a different number.
“Over the years, we’ve discovered that the interest groups work better [with more people],” Mike said. “At 100, you don’t get enough people. We wanted anywhere from 5 to 15 [per interest group], depending on what we’re doing, and we found that 150 [made] that work.”
Today, the group has about 140 members. The deficit, according to current Catawbans president Jim Smith, could cause problems in the future.
In a message sent to members and posted on the group’s website, Jim wrote, “We are 9 members shy of our full club complement of 150. If our membership shortage continues, we will run at a deficit, meaning that spending for some events will be negatively impacted. We don’t want that to happen. We need everyone’s help to talk up the club with friends and neighbors and to invite some prospects to attend a meeting to learn more about us.”
Mike and other members in the organization disagree.
“I told these guys 150 is not a target, it’s a cap,” said Catawbans webmaster David Scott. “All the members would rather have a smaller, more active group where everybody knows everybody. I guess 150 is about at the top of that.”
Regardless of group membership, the Catawbans’ interest groups and other activities continue to thrive.
The group has 24 interest groups, most of which are active with several members each.
The most consistently popular interest group is golf, an activity that regularly attracts more than twenty members.
“We go golfing Monday in Mooresville, Tuesday is two places, Lake Norman Country Club and Glen Oaks in Maiden, Wednesday’s an off day, Thursday’s River Oaks, and Friday’s another one at River Oaks,” Mike said. “So you can play golf four days a week with the club.”
Other interest groups meet to do activities such as pickleball, boating, hiking, and fly fishing. When in the mood for less physical activities, members can enjoy a classic car club, a movie club, a military history club, or a book club.
Another popular interest group, Excursions, takes tours of local businesses and organizations.
“We just did an excursion last week to Muddy Water Distillery. They opened for lunch and we went on a tour. We had like 19 guys there,” David said. “The next one’s going to be a tour of the Amazon Fulfillment Center down there by the airport, and we’re going to stop at Royal Bliss [brewery] on the way back. They’re going to open up early for us to serve us lunch and give us a tour there.”
The organization also has regular meetings at Camp Dogwood, a lakeside camp near Terrell, and other events and meetings throughout the year.
One of the most popular events is the annual Pig Pickin’, a free dinner for all Catawbans members and their spouses, usually held somewhere
beside Lake Norman. Mike has been preparing the pig every year for the past thirteen years.
“I get up at five in the morning. I’ve got everything ready. Start the fire at five,” Mike said. “And I wrap them during the day, and then we put them in a big cooler. Shut the lid so it continues to cook. Then we carry it to our meeting place and pick it there. It’s good stuff. We’ve had as many as 165 [people come to] the Pig Pickin’.”
Unlike its forerunner the Newcomers, the Catawbans is not an organization only for transplants from other states. Despite this, transplants seem to gravitate towards the organization.
“I would say that maybe more [members] are from New York than any other place up north,” Mike said. “Because usually when we get a new member, we [don’t] ask him [where he’s from], we ask him what part of New York he’s from.”
The Catawbans’ membership fee has historically hovered around $20 per year, but Mike says the rate was recently raised.
“They just moved it up to $35, because they want to do some more things,” Mike said. “They have now a Catawban Appreciation Day, and that’s in the summer, out at Mountain [Creek] Park, and they rent a pavilion, and then the officers of the club cook hamburgers and hot dogs, and then the guys just come. We had spouses come to that one, too. They do [things like that].”
Despite the current membership deficit, Mike says he expects the organization to continue well into the future.
“We’ve been going for almost 20 years,” Mike said. “We’ve been there before. We don’t panic over having a few members not being there, because we still have the same groups. We still have the same participation. And we’ll be back.”
To learn more or to submit an application to join the Catawbans, visit the organization’s website at thecatawbans.com.