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Gentleman Revolutionary
President General William Pless Lunger
William Pless Lunger got involved with the General Society in a roll-up-your-sleeves way typical of his style of leadership: he managed the buses for the fun-filled 2007 Triennial held in Wilmington, North Carolina. That was no small task at a Triennial that kept people moving— from Wrightville Beach to Orton Plantation to the Cape Fear Country Club. Managing effectively behind the scenes, dedication to our mission, and making sure people enjoy being part of the Society have defined his quiet leadership in the General Society for the last decade.
Pless is a North Carolina native and graduated from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill with a degree in political science. He retired from the U.S. Army Reserve as a major of infantry. He is the father of three—two daughters, Katherine Gaines Lunger and Ann Meggett Wyborski, and a son (and Society successor), Dr. William Pless Lunger, Jr., who practices medicine in Montana.
He is a third generation member. His grandfather, James William Pless, Jr., an associate justice of the North Carolina Supreme Court, was the first member of his family to join the Society. Armistead Jones Maupin, his good friend and the Society’s twenty-second president general, persuaded him to apply. “He joined the Society,” Pless says, “because of his true love of American history and his sincere dedication to principles of law and democracy.”
Pless joined the Society in November 1997 and married Mary Peyton in January 1999. The Society has been a shared experience for them,
Pless explains, “an important focal point of our life together. We have been very fortunate to make many friendships with people throughout the country we would have never met otherwise.”
Our new president general is descended from Surgeon Isaac Alexander, a Maryland native who graduated from the College of New Jersey (now Princeton University) in the same class as Aaron Burr and James Madison. He took up medical practice in Charlotte, North Carolina, which was growing rapidly on the eve of the Revolutionary War. He joined the Continental Army as a surgeon, and was present at the disastrous battle of Camden, where he tended to the wounded— including the mortally wounded General DeKalb and also very likely to the wounded Major Thomas Pinckney, who later became the fourth president general of our Society.
“I’ve always been interested in the American Revolution,” Pless says, “particularly the incredible story of how seemingly ordinary people from all walks of life, living at the edge of the world’s mightiest empire, objected to the ways in which they were being governed and started a revolution.”
Given his commitment to our mission, his skill in making connections, and his energetic, can-do approach to meeting challenges, his selection to serve as a General Officer was a natural step.
In 2010 he was elected assistant secretary general and set to work with Jack Warren and Glenn Hennessey to modernize Cincinnati Fourteen, which had been published in a cramped journal format for a generation. “Our aim is to get
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