Gorilla sighting reported in White Lake

WHITE LAKE – Some people will know her as the gorilla lady or the gorilla handler or Pricilla’s owner, but most people in the White Lake area will know Anna Stanley as Anna Langston.

And yes, she will answer to all of the above.

She is readying the store and battening down the hatches as a sea of visitors are about to embark on the tiny town of White Lake, North Carolina.

“The name ‘Langston’ goes back quite a ways,” Stanley said. “I was actually born in Goldsboro, and even though my family lived in Princeton, my grandfather and my dad owned a motel in White Lake called Langstons.”

Part of the old Langstons motel was where the Grand Regal sits now. According to Langston, they bulldozed the old structure within the last two years after it was sold.

“My grandfather and my dad built that,” she said. “Technically my grandfather. Then my dad and his brothers, they built on to it. Eventually my dad bought his brothers out and then he owned it. I was just a baby when my family fully established here in White Lake, so for me, White Lake has always been my home.”

Stanley’s father passed away when she was only 8 years old, and has come to learn to live with the tragedy as a blessing due to what she’s learned through it. As they say, there are lessons in darkness you can never learn in the light.

“We had a lot of businesses here in town,” she said. “We have the store, we had the motel which had another gift shop, land, storage facilities, rental units. Additionally, there is property in Goldsboro. When my father passed away, at the time of his death, they owned 13 different businesses. So, for my mom who had four kids, 16, 14, 12 and I was eight. It all got to be just too much for her so something just kinda had to go.”

The motel changed hands four times since the Langstons owned it and the demolition.

Stanley went to East Bladen High School and became a part of the new school when it left it’s former location. She graduated in 2004.

“I graduated an eagle but I started out as a cougar,” she said.

And now, she has a gorilla. And a legacy to take the family business to another level.

“I was in the family business since birth,” she said with a big smile. “You pick up cigarette butts and trash and rake the beach. That was literally our every morning ritual. You always had to do that so when visitors walked out of their cabins, everything was pristine. I still can’t walk by a cigarette butt without stopping to pick it up and put it in the trash can. You kind of get engrained with some of those things that you learned at an early age. And in addition to that, because we owned the hotel, then it was scrubbin’ toilets, cleanin’ rooms and makin’ beds.”

Some of the free time that Stanley remembers growing up on the lake.

“I mean, what’s not to do?” she asked. “What’s not to love? It’s recreational city right there on the lake. We were lucky enough to have a boat which is what we’re riding on in the parade this year. It’s an older Ski Nautique boat which of course makes a lot of people turn their heads if you have one.”

The Langston kids were all involved in the later Ski Heels and then got into wake boarding after the ski sensation kind of cooled off.

“My oldest brother and a group of people that live close by were wake boarders,” she said. “My brother Austin was No. 1 in the world at one point.”

This year with the Ski Heels funding the return of a ski show on the lake, it brings a lot of memories and excitement to those who were there 30 years ago to see their last show before the hiatus of the sport.

“We’re really excited about that,” she said. “I am on the committee and was there when the idea to bring them back was proposed. I think what the people remember most about the water festival has always been the ski performance. Every year when we wanted to bring it back, it was hard because things just aren’t what they used to be, getting people together for not only the performance but for the practicing in colder early spring weather. The lake is freezing!”

When talking about the lake and comparing the beauty to Lake Waccamaw to the south, one giant difference has a tail and large teeth. For all the alligators that call Waccamaw home, supposedly there is only one alligator story that involves White Lake.

White Lake is a natural spring-fed lake that Stanley said, “was so clean you could see the bottom when I was growing up and so clean that I actually drank the water.”

Because of the tear-drop formations in the surrounding five lakes and not being man-made, there is another idea “floating” around the lake as to how it got there.

“The proposed theory is that a meteorite came in and when it entered the atmosphere it broke up,” she said. “The five lakes were created by the five meteorite fragments and each one is tear-dropped and shallow on one end and deeper on the other.

As for Stanley’s journey from family business to college and then back to caring for a gorilla store, it was a case of exploring but not being able to pull the trigger on determining a career. She is one of the smart ones who didn’t subject themselves to a life sentence in a job that felt more like a prison than the perfect career.

She first went to UNC-Wilmington and was on her last year which involved a student teaching component. She felt as she got deeper into the mud that she just could not choose it as her life’s profession.

She transferred to Cape Fear Community College and decided on dentistry rather than students. As Goldy Lox so aptly taught each of us as children that the first one was too hot, the second one was too cold and finally, she took a spoonful of porridge that was called “family business” and she had an epiphany along with a good warm and satisfying meal going back and getting a degree in business.

“After realizing what I did not want to do, a position opened up in one of our family businesses in Goldsboro,” she said. “I ended up having to move there for six months which is where after a while I thought to myself, ‘why am I fighting not going to business school?’ I’ve done business my whole life, my family’s been in business for all that time, but I went because I knew that if I wanted to be successful and taken seriously as a business woman, I would need a degree. I also needed to learn everything there was about that craft. So, I went back UNCW and I got a degree in business and marketing. I then moved to Raleigh.”

To make a long story very short, she killed it in the business world – so much so that she was working for Holiday Inn, got noticed by competitor Mariott who made her an offer she couldn’t refuse and then stepped once again into Déjà vu being wooed away by corporate giant Sodexo who has a global workforce of over 435,000.

The little White Lake entrepreneur was rubbing shoulders with the big boys and girls, but she found out that she missed the way her family ran and was successful in a smaller market. She opted for family business over global corporate.

“I’m grateful for it because I learned a lot,” she said. “And that is the reason I had to get away. I took a lot from that, but I also realized that it was not who I was, nor was it who I wanted to be. Corporate is very black and white, many times not looking for new or fresh ideas. Especially from a young upstart. My mamma always told me that everybody is a teacher and a student. Just depends on different scenarios. There’s something to be learned and something to be taught in every situation.”

Everybody is always curious as to the ratiocination for the gorilla. Not a model. Not a mannequin. Not a cute bunny. But… Pricilla.

“So, it’s Pricilla the Gorilla,” Stanley said. “You see, my dad was pretty much an entrepreneur when he was ‘spit out the womb.’ The gorilla actually used to move and wave to cars passing by. Part of his thinking was that we are somewhat off the road a ways down from all the major activity. He said that if he had something moving on the side of the road, it would draw their eyes as you were passing by.”

And of course, who wouldn’t have a car load of kids all over the idea of seeing an animatronic full-size gorilla. Now, the story is that Pricilla used to be Fred, but that story needs to be told by Stanley off the record.

Pricilla has been a staple of the store since it opened which is 39 years ago. God only knows how old she was when she was adopted by Langston. This is also Anna’s 39th summer and she has seen a lot of history and has oh, about a million stories to tell. Sitting in the man-rocker chair and listening to Gorilla stories is now a trendy thing to do in White Lake. A documentary, instead of Jane Goodall’s “Wild Chimpanzees” could actually be Anna Langston Stanley’s “Adventures with Pricilla on a small lake in North Carolina.”

“My dad and my mom opened the store,” she said. “He went to a buying show where there was an animatronics dealer.”

It was love at first sight. And although the store was originally called “Resort Collections,” the crowds just kept calling it the gorilla store and the name is now combined as “The Gorilla Store Resort Collections.”

“T-shirts and swimwear are the most popular items purchased here,” Stanley said. “We have a large selection of swimwear and I think we pride ourselves on fitting swimsuits to women just because I know that as a woman, it’s hard to find something we feel good and comfortable in. We try to make everybody feel really good when they come.”

When you visit, you will see a kind of Penn and Teller thing going on with delightful conversation from Anna and goofy looks from Pricilla who has now, in later life succumbed to technical arthritis (TA) and no longer uses her animatronics.

A trip to the festival would not be complete without visiting this pair of truly entrepreneurial women.

Visit their website for hours, deals and their trendy inventory. For information you can call 910- 862-4664. You can also visit their store on Facebook at: https://www.facebook.com/whitelakegorillastore/

The address is 1337 White Lake Drive in White Lake, North Carolina

Mark DeLap is a journalist, photographer and the editor and general manager of the Bladen Journal. To email him, send a message to: mdelap@bladenjournal.com