Cameo: Linda Diggs

A native of Fayetteville Linda Diggs has lived in Wrightsville Beach for six years and has been a member of the Harbor Island Garden Club for five of them. She was elected president last year and her term ends this month.

What is the best perk of your position?

Probably getting to know the members. When you are just a member you don’t really interact with all the other members. Just learning all that is involved and how much really goes on between the meetings is a perk because you do realize what is going on and you can help more and you can be more involved the more you know about it.

How did you get to be president?

You’re nominated and elected. There are 45 active members and a lot of honorary and associate members and that kind of thing.

If you had to do it all over again what would you change about your life?

Not a whole lot. I have been very very blessed with my family and my children. I just would like to have known at 20 what I know now but I can’t really change that.

What were your ambitions earlier in your life?

Really I have always wanted to be a mom and a wife. I have two boys. I am a career woman but my goal was always to have a happy family. My mom was a stay-at-home mom and that is always what I thought I would do: Raise a family and be a good wife and mother. It’s not an aspiration of many but it is the toughest job there is.

What is the quality you most respect in others?

Probably organization. I’m very organized and I appreciate other people being organized.

What talent do you wish you had?

I wish I could sing.

What’s a little-known fact about you?

Probably that I am the youngest of six kids. My sisters live here. Also the fact that I have been an interior decorator for 20 years. I try to hide that. I do work here some but only for people I know or through the grapevine.

What is your most-marked characterization?

Leadership and organization. From my friends’ standpoint they would say that I love to entertain. I have a lot of get-togethers a lot of parties. Being organized helps.

What are your observations about Wrightsville Beach?

I’m a North Carolina girl and I had been trying to get back. We lived in Georgia and South Carolina and I wanted to come back. I love the simplicity of it. I love that my children can ride their bikes to school walk to Scouts. I love the small-townness of it but it is not backward or behind the times. It is like living in a big city in a small town and I love that. I don’t know why everyone doesn’t live here.

What would you like to see preserved — or changed — about Wrightsville Beach in the next five years?

I would like to see that not all of the older homes are taken down. I really hope that the beach cottages will survive. We just moved from a 50-year-old beach cottage and I just loved it. I hope that the character and the charm won’t go away.