Mickey Pettus

Updated July 15, 2009, 4:03 p.m.

Mickey Pettus, a resident of the River Run neighborhood and president of its homeowners association, has entered the race for Town Board.

Mr. Pettus is the eighth candidate to announce a run for the 5-member board, which is up for election Nov. 3.

Mr. Pettus is a vice president of performance services for VHA Inc., of Irving, Texas, a cooperative of more than 2,000 non-profit hospitals nationwide. He also is retired from Abbott Laboratories Inc., where he had a long career in the pharmaceuticals and medical devices business.

An 18-year Davidson resident, Mr. Pettus and his wife Sondra were among the first residents of River Run (“32nd home built,” he notes), a neighborhood of nearly 700 homes and a country club off Davidson-Concord Road, east of the town center. He’s actually in his second stint as president of River Run Property Owners Association. He served three terms from 1994 to 1997, and was elected again last year.

Mr. Pettus is a North Carolina native, and has been active in the community, as a member of Davidson Lions Club, as an ordained deacon of the Presbyterian Church USA, and as a former member of the Mooresville Soup Kitchen board of directors. A Western Carolina University grad, he also has been on the Western Carolina University Catamount Club Board of Directors, and currently serves on the board of the W-Club, an association of former Western Carolina athletes.

Mr. Pettus said he has “no agenda,” and is interested in getting involved beyond his neighborhood. “I just want to get more integrally involved in Davidson as a community at large,” he told DavidsonNews.net.

He’s interested in “service to the community, and to preserve the ‘southern charm’ that makes Davidson what it is today,” Mr. Pettus said in an interview Wednesday.

“I’m really interested in taking those things that are so attractive from the past and preserving them, but at the same time realizing we’ve got to grow, and that is something that needs to be controlled,” he said.

One interesting tidbit: Mr. Pettus isn’t the first in his family to run for public office. Wife Sondra ran for Town Board in 1996. The couple has two sons, Robert of Cornelius and Jonathan, who lives in Huntersville.

Mr. Pettus said he “has a strong value system and believes that family and the community are the most important platforms for developing those values.”

With Mr. Pettus’s filing at the Mecklenburg Board of Elections Wednesday, Davidson now has eight candidates for five town board seats.

At least two town board seats will change hands on Nov. 3: Both Bill Johnson and Evan Webster have announced plans to step down after their term ends. Fellow board members Margo Williams, Laurie Venzon and Brian Jenest all are running for re-election. Davidson College police chief Fountain Walker filed Tuesday to run for the second time, after narrowly missing election last year.

Also seeking seats for the first time are Connie Wessner, Tim Dreffer, and Drew Crawford. (See all of DavidsonNews.net’s coverage of the election filings so far at category “2009 Election.”)

Filing continues through midday Friday.