By Elliott Brack
Editor and Publisher, GwinnettForum
MAY 25, 2021 | The subject is the City of Berkeley Lake. This information comes from a letter from the late Pat LaHatte Langley, a long-time Berkeley Lake resident. We knew her professionally when I was with the Gwinnett Daily News and later through our church.
She had been with the Atlanta Journal-Constitution since 1940, and was the promotion director and first female on the executive staff of those newspapers. The position of promotion director, she thought, was the best job on the newspaper, since it encompasses all aspects of journalism, from news, to representing the paper, coming up with ideas of how to advance it, and in general, how to go about promoting it within the community.
The letter from Pat dates from Feb. 27, 1997, and was writte to me when I worked for the AJC. Here’s the entirety of that letter. Pat, in longhand, wrote: “I would like nto dispel the myth that keeps cropping up in print that the city of Berkeley Lake was populated originally by wealthy Atlantans. Upper middle class, yes, but not wealthy.
Berkeley Lane City Hall
“The dam (at Berkeley Lake) was constructed in 1948 and two years later, the subdivision was laid out and named after developer Frank Coggin’s Berkeley Blue Granite quarries in Elberton, Ga. In 1952 Calvin and Kate Parsons (of Duluth) and John and Dorothy Bagwell acquired the 700 acre tract and a year later, 25 property owners founded the Lake Berkeley Civic Association. At that time, I began swimming in the lake with one of the original 25. I later purchased that lot.
“A cross section of owners included a chiropractor, an ophthalmologist, a hospital official, a school principal, a delicatessen owner, a telephone official and several retirees, who loved to fish, canoe and picnic….none rich by Atlanta standards.
“I live on ‘Coggins’ Reserve’ and have watched the phenomenal growth and sky-rocketing land values, which have turned this once quiet, bucolic retreat into surburbia.”
LaHatte Langley
Patricia Noot LaHatte Langley was a happy soul, born in Port Townsend, Wash., but her family soon settled in Atlanta. She graduated from Girls’ High and obtained a degree from the High Museum School of Art. In 1940, she began a job as the first art editor of The Atlanta Journal Sunday magazine. In 1942 she became the picture editor of the Journal, the only female picture editor in the nation.
In a major advancement, in 1954 she became promotion manager for both The Journal and Atlanta Constitution, and was the first female executive on the paper’. Meanwhile she was named the Atlanta Woman of the Year in 1958, later authored a book on Atlanta. All the time, she was an artist, specializing in water colors. She married Milner LaHatte in 1s senior staff. In 1969 she was the first female president of the International Newspaper Promotion Association 942, and was divorced in 1950. After her retirement, in 1978 she married James D. Langley, a legendary high school football coach, who died in 1987. Ms. LaHatte died in 2010 in Berkeley Lake, Ga.
Pat donated her archives about Atlanta newspapering to Emory University. The archive is extensive, consisting of six linear feet of 12 boxes, four oversized paper boxes, one bound volume and audio visual masters, and another linear foot of two boxes. Because of this legacy, we have excellent records for others to study.
And thank you, Pat, for telling how the little city of Berkeley Lake (estimated population now 1,839) evolved.
Today Berkeley Lake is one of the most sought-after spots to live in Gwinnett, with Realtor.com saying that the median selling price of houses in 2020 was $614,000.
- Have a comment? Send to: elliott@brack.net
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