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Board of Governors — biographies

 
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Shirley Mason, Miami, FL [Founder/Executive Director/Secretary]
While President of South Florida Free Beaches (SFFB), Shirley, along with a small group of leaders of that organization, was involved in every aspect of working with local and state governments and area businesses to establish and secure Haulover Beach in Miami, FL for naturists. Shirley literally wrote the book(let) on How to Establish and Secure a Clothing-Optional Beach. She served on the founding Board of Florida Association for Nude Recreation (now known as AANR Florida, the Florida Region of the American Association for Nude Recreation) and, as Past Chair, Executive Director, and Treasurer of two national organizations, the Naturist Action Committee and Naturist Education Foundation. Jointly with her husband, Richard Mason, current SFFB President, Shirley received in 2014 AANR's prestigious Jim Cossins Memorial Award for distinguished, meritorious, and continuous service and lifetime achievement in the cause of nude recreation.

Shirley has organized several successful projects to educate the public and governmental agencies concerning the viability of clothing-optional recreation as an asset to community as well as individual well-being. Shirley and Richard collaborate as social activists and partners in work and life. She is a strong voice with revolutionary ideas for clothing-optional recreation in Florida, nationally, and interna-tionally. Those ideas have become realities, successful for the naturist market and profitable for business and government. Her diverse professional experience, skills and leadership have led to her numerous achievements in both private business and nonprofit arenas.
A message from Shirley Mason

I became actively involved in organized nude recreation in 1989 after declaring myself as a naturist and member of South Florida Free Beaches in 1982. It’s been an insightful, edu-cational, and consciousness-raising experi-ence. I've learned so much from naturists / nudists on working visits to areas I'd never been to before. I've given much thought and action on how to improve public acceptance of nude recreation and overcome growing legislative obstacles to our survival. We've shared ideas, knowledge, successes, failures, and friendship, and these years have only served to strengthen my resolve for the preservation of nude recreation.

Martin Novoa, Pompano Beach, FL [Vice President]: South Florida Free Beaches

Wendy Metts, Leesburg, FL [Treasurer]
Wendy graduated with a B.S. degree in Marketing and continued her career as a retail manager on Long Island, NY.

When notified by the New York State Department of Social Services the summer following graduation that she qualified for a social worker position, she accepted it and began a five-year struggle with a burdened system that offered few options for her caseload of predominantly female welfare recipients. She resigned, believing she could better effect the changes needed on a grassroots level out in the community.

Wendy began a 17-year career as a Clinic Director in the field of reproductive health care in the socioeconomically depressed areas of Long Island and Manhattan. A pro-choice advocate, she headed the clinic for The Bill Baird Institute, offering birth control and gynecological care in the early '80s. She formed the Speakers Bureau, which got her invited into suburban classrooms, where the facts about pregnancy, STDs, and birth control could be presented to at-risk youths, to the relief of health education teachers, who were not permitted to address these issues.

 When the early '90s ushered in the HIV/AIDS epidemic, Wendy was a Clinic Director for the largest non-profit healthcare agency in the City of New York. As funding for reproductive health care was scarce, she worked with grant writers to apply for federal funding to treat HIV+ clients. Her clinic in the East New York section of Brooklyn was chosen as one of two clinics in the country to be awarded a $3.4 million grant. This was the agency's first of ten Primary Care Programs throughout the city for HIV+ clients, providing medical treatment, case management, and clinical trials at a time when there was limited knowledge of this disease and a crippling bias due to fear and misunderstanding.

Education became her focus — of the public through networking and outreach and of politicians through marches and meetings with representatives in Washington, DC

When Long Island was hit with 17 snowstorms in 1997, Wendy, a beach lover and house nudist, moved to South Florida and found Haulover Beach. Her joy at being topless on Bondi Beach in Australia ten years earlier was surpassed. Her		 advocacy for nude recreation had begun.

Holding a Real Estate Broker's license in New York since 1981, she became licensed in Florida and, in 2000, opened Wendy L. Pierro Realty. With the Internet becoming the preferred housing search tool, Wendy became the Director of Sales and Marketing for ehome.com.

In 2003, Wendy partnered with a client in setting up a public company, acting as a Board Director, Secretary/Treasurer, and Director of Marketing. The multi-level marketing model was used to develop an online DVD rental company. Just shy of $1 million was raised the first year.

Wendy's health care advocacy continued as an Ombudsman in Central Florida and as a licensed Certified Nursing Assistant. Wendy's passion for naturism has her committed to educating and advocating to realize her vision of nude recreation as an accepted choice.

Boating on the St. John's River with husband, Jim, raising monarch butterflies, and frequent travel refuel her.
Carl Flick, West Palm Beach and Fort Pierce, FL: Treasure Coast Naturists

In the mid-1970s, Carl discovered naturism at the age of 16 and was an enthusiastic visitor to the former nude beach on Honeymoon Island, Florida. In 1980, while in graduate school in North Carolina, Carl founded the North Carolina Naturists (NCN). Striking up a friendship with Naturist Society founder Lee Baxandall, Carl wrote numerous articles for the quarterly, Clothed with the Sun and its successor, N Magazine. His essays typically contained detailed information and maps that helped newcomers find unique, clothing-optional recreation sites throughout the Carolinas. NCN grew to over 300 members within its first three years of existence and became a significant organization during those pioneering years of the free beach movement.

As part of this formative era, in 1984, NCN and The Naturist Society co-hosted one of the first summits for nude beach activists in the United States. Held in Charlotte, NC and a nearby rural retreat in Woodward, SC, the gathering played host to nude beach activists from as far away as Moonstone Beach, RI (New England Naturist Association – NENA) and Miami's Virginia Key (with South Florida Free Beaches' then president, Tom Chittenden). The goals were straightforward: Create a national organization to monitor potentially harmful federal and state legislative initiatives and foster coordination between the constellation of North American naturist groups.

Carl moved from Charlotte to West Palm Beach, FL in 1988. He subsequently joined the board of 		SFFB. On the very first day that naturists inaugurated Miami's Haulover (nude) Beach in 1991, he was one of approximately 25 attendees. In 1995, Carl founded the Palm Beach Naturists (PBN). Within its first year, PBN created a full-service website. It provided key background on several struggling nude beaches between Fort Pierce and West Palm Beach and served as a hub for social events. Unappreciated at the time, PBN's website was one of the first comprehensive naturist group websites in the United States. PBN continued as an organization for six years. At the same time, Carl participated with founder Lynn Korpar in building a new group 50 miles north, called the Treasure Coast Naturists (TCN). Based in Fort Pierce, TCN focused on defending Hutchinson Island's long-established, three-mile stretch of clothing-optional shoreline (encompassing Middle Cove Beach, Little Muddy Creek Beach, and Blind Creek Beach). In 1999, TCN merged with PBN into one group under Carl's leadership.

Professionally, Carl worked as an urban planner, geographer, artist, and travel photographer. His passions have enabled him to wander the world. Having visited over 85 countries on six continents, Carl has also been able to sample and document naturist opportunities throughout Australia, Europe, Africa, South America, the Caribbean region including Central America, South Asia, Pacific Oceania, and even the Arctic. Carl's experiences in presenting before a variety of audiences has given him valuable skills for 		lobbying government. They have translated into anadditional set of strengths when communicating naturist values to the uninitiated.

In 2007, after years of body painting and capturing the results on film, Carl opened two related businesses (Body Painting by Flick and Flick Photographic). He serves a variety of paying clients, including naturists who fly to Florida in order to be singularly painted and photographed in his studio or in stunning outdoor settings. Carl's extensive, hand-painted and airbrush artwork (as well as his photography) can be viewed via the links immediately above.

Carl was one of the founding members of the reconstituted Treasure Coast Naturists in 2014. This non-profit spearheaded governmental acceptance of the clothing-optional zone at Blind Creek Beach. As part of a tight team of TCN lobbyists and board members, Carl and others have successfully educated St. Lucie County Commissioners while working with support staff to manage the naturist beach. Carl created and serves as the webmaster for TCN's website at treasurecoastnaturists.org. It contains over 40 informative pages. It also serves as a valuable resource to orient nude beach newcomers as well as win over previous skeptics. TCN's website is currently building a sponsorship base within the the local business hospitality sector in St. Lucie County.

David Gibbon, Melbourne, FL: Central Florida Naturists
David first discovered naturism in the early '90s, with visits to Playalinda and Haulover Beaches. He joined The Naturist Society and Central Florida Naturists (then Space Coast Naturists) in 1995. Moving to Florida in 1997, he became increasingly active in the naturist movement, helping fight the anti-nudity legislation targeting Playalinda Beach. He has served as Newsletter Editor and later President of Central Florida Naturists. David was elected Treasurer of B.E.A.C.H.E.S. in February 2017. David has a BS in Mathematics from Wake Forest University, and currently works as a free-lance software engineer. He is a private pilot, enjoys boating and photography, and is an avid amateur astronomer.

Michelle Jackson, Dallas, TX: Black Naturists Association

Claudia Kellersch, San Diego, CA: Black's Beach Bares
Claudia is an international naturist activist. Born and raised in Bavaria, Germany, she first learned about social nudism from her uncle as a child. She experienced nudism for herself during a school trip, when her classmates dared her to strip at a naturist beach. It was the first beach of many worldwide.

After graduating with her second master's 		degree from the University of Heidelberg, Germany, she accepted a relocation offer and began working in Seattle, WA. There she also started a high-tech and medical translation business. She has provided simultaneous conference interpretation services nationwide for over twenty years in many industries, as well as mentoring, organizing, and event planning. As a trained and experienced public speaker and media contact, she has dedicated her life to promoting body acceptance and family naturism worldwide.

Gary Mussell, Moorpark, CA: Southern California Naturist Association (SCNA), Friends of Bates Beach (a division of SCNA), AANR West
A third-generation Californian, Gary has lived in the greater Los Angeles area all his life. Through work, however, he has taught training classes in more than 40 states across the U.S. and visited many countries around the Pacific Rim and in Europe.

Gary worked as a retail manager and insurance agent before discovering microcomputers in the early 1980s. He learned he had a gift for quickly understanding software programs and for teaching them to others, and so he changed careers. He wrote a syndicated magazine column, Coping With Computers, for the small business community for four years in the mid-1980s, and then taught various tech-related courses at local colleges and adult vocational schools until hired 		by a database startup to be their VP of Marketing. Later, he was hired by Intel as Training Manager of one of their four corporate divisions, where he remained for many years.

Gary's first nudist experience was at a local nude beach, later closed by the authorities. He then joined Elysium Fields in Malibu and remained a member for 20+ years. He served for three years on its last Board of Directors trying desperately (and unsuccessfully) to save it from closure in 2000. Its members formed SCNA the next year, with Gary as its President, an office he held for more than ten years until 2011. He continues to serve as SCNA's newsletter editor. In 2007, he became active in the movement to reopen Bates Beach (at the Ventura / Santa Barbara County 		line, near Carpinteria) to clothing-optional use.

In 2015, Gary was elected Vice President of AANR West and assumed responsibilities as its untitled executive director. In 2017, he was elected President. He also chairs the region's Website Committee.

He was named to Who’s Who in California in 1987, and also to Who’s Who in American Training. Currently, he is a member of the Carpinteria Chamber of Commerce.

Divorced, Gary is a father of one grown daughter and a grandfather to two girls. He met his current life partner, Patty, at Elysium in 1999, and they have been together ever since.

Claude Richards, Madison, WI: Badger Naturists

Judy E. Williams, Vancouver, BC: Wreck Beach Preservation Society
Judy has been a naturist and environmental rights activist at Wreck Beach and other naturist beaches across North America since 1969. She has led battles against towers, truck crossings, island high rises, millions of gallons of jet fuel being transported past Wreck Beach weekly, beach highways, ferry landings and a mega marina. She is now defending Wreck Beach against federal Port Metro Vancouver, who wants to crush the beauty and tranquility of the biodiverse estuarine marshes there. She has championed naturist rights with many North American naturist organizations since 1969, including changing legislation against nudity in two provinces. In addition, Judy has been a life model since the mid-'80s and body-painted with flair since 1969.