Board Members


Board Profiles

LLAA 2023-2024 Board of Directors & Alternates

To contact any board members, please send an email to longlakeliving@gmail.com.  This email is monitored daily and your message will be passed along to the board member you wish to contact.  It would also be helpful if you include your neighborhood or lake address and if you wish the board member to contact you by email or by phone. 
 
Executive Committee 

President
    Jaimie Beretta

Co-Vice Presidents
     Sam Oliver
     Cheryl Scholz

Secretary
    CC White

Treasurer
    Sharon Natzel

Assistant Treasurer (non-voting member)
    Doug Bakken


Board of Directors

Neighborhood 1

Frederick Rickers 

Fred and I have been coming to Long Lake since about 1978.  We stayed at Timberlane and our entire family loved being here.  We began staying one week, then two, then 3 and occasionally 4.   As Fred neared retirement, we began looking for and found a cabin –the first north of Timberlane Resort.  We have owned it since 2004.  Most often we stay from mid June until early October and always feel the pull to return as the winter comes to an end in Nebraska.  We feel a sadness when we leave in the Fall.  We are both are native Nebraskans.  My family came to MN for their vacation and that is were I learned to fish.   We have two children and they also love to come to Long Lake and bring their families.  We have made lifelong friends here and continue enjoy meeting and connecting with new people.  Both Fred and I love nature and enjoy the wildlife, birds and the soul-stirring scenery that the lake supplies.  Walking, reading, fishing and being with visiting family are some of our favorite memories of the lake.  We want to pass the love and respect for the environment on to our grandchildren.  

James Alseth (Alternate) 

Neighborhood 2

Keith Manlove 
 
I grew up on the south end of the lake and currently reside in Rochester, MN. My wife and I became owners of our first lot on Circle Pine Drive in the early 90s. My interest in the human connection to the natural world was first sparked while doing the Conservation Project as a member of the Hubbard Rustlers 4H Club. That interest continued to grow throughout my life and has culminated in me becoming a Master Gardener.

Family photos from the 50s, 60s and 70s, taken on and around the lake show how much the shoreline has changed over the years. With the recent discovery of Zebra Mussels, our lake, and how we enjoy the lake, faces what may be its most significant change. As lakeshore owners, we are stewards of the lake. How we manage this new challenge will impact how we and future generations use and enjoy the lake. I hope that my life-long passion for nature will have a positive impact on our lake moving forward.


Roger Hall (Alternate)

Roger and Jenny, along with their extended family of over 20 grandchildren, call Long Lake their seasonal home from May to Oct with Summer 2023 being their 4th season on Long Lake! Their winter residence is Neola, Iowa.

Roger spent summers growing up on Lake Belle Taine with 4 siblings. During his college days, he also worked summer jobs in our lakes area. After retiring from banking, Roger wanted to spend more than 2 weeks of vacation time at the lake.

They found the perfect spot on Long Lake just north of Wooters Point where they enjoy viewing wildlife on Long Lake and also on the small pond east of the lake.
Roger is helping with early detection of aquatic invasive species by checking the aquatic vegetation in the north half of neighborhood 2 on our volunteer shoreline monitoring team for LLAA.

Neighborhood 3

Jaimie Beretta


My husband and I purchased our Long Lake property in 2009.  Prior to that we had a small cabin on nearby Duck Lake. When we realized that we had outgrown our small lake cabin we decided to look at properties on Long Lake because of its excellent fishing.  Our oldest son is an avid fisherman and has fished with his grandparents on Long Lake since he was 4.  We enjoy spending as much time as we can at the lake kayaking, boating, fishing, biking and spending time with my parents who live nearby.  One of my goals of being an association board member is getting to know the people who share an interest in our lake.  I also hope to work to help keep our lake water clean and AIS free.


Sharon Natzel   (Alternate)

"My Long Lake connection began at age 8 when my family bought a lot on Crystal Beach so we could begin experiencing what tourists traveled far to see in our Park Rapids vacation land.  Long Lake summers as a kid were filled with water adventures like skiing, swimming, fishing, bouncing on inner tubes, plus catching and releasing frogs in races between all of us “Lais Girls” and the neighborhood kids.  I met my husband, Bob, at “the lake” as his family was just two doors down at the brown boathouse.  Racing activities have been replaced with cruising in the green boat, observing loons, eagles and herons, plus an occasional pelican in the late summer.  I notice sunrises and sunsets, appreciating nature and the seasonal cycles even more.  We’ve expanded our use of this lake we love with winter sports, too."

Neighborhood 4
 
Cheryl Scholz 
 
I grew up vacationing at resorts on a variety of northern MN lakes. Later in life, my husband and I vacationed at Cedar Shores Resort on Long Lake, as well as homes on other lakes in the area. We enjoyed each opportunity so much that we decided to purchase our lake house on Long Lake in 2012 and transitioned from “weekenders” to year around
residents in 2018. We are very thankful for the opportunities to view wildlife, kayak and boat on the lake. I am passionate about retaining the beauty and health of Long Lake and ensuring others in the future can enjoy the same opportunities that we have had.
 
 Sam Oliver (Alternate) 
 
Our family’s cabin is Lookout Point.  We are a branch of the Hansell Family Tree.  Friends and extended family started arriving in the 1880’s, and my family came to Long Lake in 1947. For 31 years I was Director of Citizens for Conservation in the greater Barrington, Illinois area and am a member of the management committee of the Flint  Creek/Spring Creek Watershed Partnership there.  I serve on land trust coalitions and in my work am involved with environmental issues including invasive species, water quality, and the use of native plants.  Our family includes four children and six grandchildren who enjoy Long Lake where my concerns as a member of the board are invasive species, water quality and the engagement of the next generation in these issues.
 
Neighborhood 5

Fritz Viner

Fritz retired from Otolaryngology practice in Iowa City, Iowa and is a long- time participant in summer activities on Long Lake and now more of a 4-season resident. He’s ready to continue efforts for water quality, dark nights, wilderness and wildlife environments and social enjoyment of all the above.

Carolynne C White (CC) (Alternate)

My grandparents came to Long Lake to live in 1929 and I have lived here on the lake every summer of my life except for maybe 5. When I retired from teaching in 2009, I moved home full time.   My family has a tree farm that is now part of the Minnesota Land Trust located between Chippewa Loop and County Rd. 6.  This means the land will be managed as a tree farm and not be developed even in the future.  My family has always felt a deep connection and responsibility to the land and to Long Lake.

Neighborhood 6
 
 Caren Martin 

We keep track of our years in Park Rapids by my son’s age--he was 10 months old when we first came in 1986. For 13 years we rented cabins from Ralph and Sherri Notch at New Frontier Resort. We fell in love with the lake’s characteristics, sunsets, loons calling, exciting fishing, and the sound of wind through the pines. Jeff always was shocked that I would take four little kids in a 16’ aluminum boat to fish and come back with them all and no one was hooked!

After renting, we bought into a resort on Eagle Lake and then purchased a house on Lake Ida. All the while, we periodically looked at real estate listings on Long Lake—our favorite lake! In 2020, we bought a house that had significant water damage and had it fully renovated and updated. We LOVE being in the house on our FAVORITE lake!

This will be Jeff and my third summer engaged in the Shoreline Monitoring Program for Neighborhood 6 and are a site of one of the UMN pilot zebra mussel settlement samplers. I think I looked like an easy mark to recruit, being a former UMN associate professor and researcher from the College of Design. I just became a certified AIS Detector in June 2023. The health of Long Lake is very important to our whole family!

Jim Seifert (Alternate)

My grandparents bought their property on the Northeast end of Long Lake in 1934. As a child my mom would drive us up to “the Lake” after school was out in the spring and drive us home the day before school started in the Fall. I spent every summer of my life on Long Lake until I was 25. I fell in love with my wife Jona who lived just down the shore from our cabin. My summer “job” was owner of the Cuzzins Candy Store in Park Rapids, that my wife and I and my cousin owned for 14 years, and that put all three of us through college.
Long Lake has been a touchstone for our family for 3 generations. Jona and I feel that we are
merely caretakers for our cabin, preserving the cabin, the memories and the lake for the
generations that came before us and that will follow after us. Jona and I feel that our mission for our family, and for our lake community, is to protect the waters and the land so that generations from now, our children’s children will look across the lake and see the same
shoreline that my grandparents did in 1934.


At Large Board Members
 
Mary Leadbetter 

My husband and I have lived on Long Lake since 1993.  My two children both graduated from Park Rapids High School and we have always been involved in the community.   I have been interested in the health of our area lakes and Long Lake in particular as well as the general environmental health of the area and wildlife.  I am very concerned about all the different types of pollution that challenge the natural beauty of the lakes area.  I am please to join the board as an alternate and hope to become more active in addressing these challenges.

Pam Petersen .

I am 61 and a native of Des Moines. My grandparents were Coyne and Ella Oldham, long time Pine Haven Beach summer residents. My first Long Lake trip was at 9 months of age and I have only missed two summers since. My husband and I bought the Kaiser cabin in Fall of 2011, just 3 doors down from the original Oldham cabin. I am a retired pediatrician and live in Davis, California.                  



Assistant Treasurer: 
Doug Bakken
 
My wife Mary and I acquired our home on Long Lake in 2001 and moved here full time from Grand Forks, ND in the summer of 2008. I retired from practice as a CPA in Grand Forks in 2005. Mary and I have a son living in Minneapolis and a son living in Fargo. They and their families, including five grandchildren, are regular visitors to Long Lake.