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Al Stango, a man so tightly connected to Lewes that many believed he still ran the city years after he left office as mayor, has died in Largo, Fla. He was 93.
His family said Stango passed on Saturday, May 10, after suffering a stroke.
A New Jersey native, Stango moved his family from Silver Spring, Md., to Lewes in the early 1950s.
As the city’s mayor, he was known for running rapid-fire city council meetings and applying “Robert’s Rules of Order” at speeds that would make nitpickers for procedure cringe.
“You’d hardly have time to get your negative comment through if it was something he wanted,” said Lewes Mayor Jim Ford.
Ford said Stango’s forceful personality was such that he often made decisions for others without ever having a discussion with them.
Ford said one day in 1987 he stopped for gas at the filling station Stango then owned on Kings Highway. “He said, ‘I put you on the [Lewes] planning commission.’ He had never talked to me about an appointment. He told me I’d like it. He was right; I did,” Ford said.
Stango’s appointment would be Ford’s entry into Lewes politics. Ford served multiple terms as a city councilman, starting in 1992, and has been mayor since 2004.
Ford said Stango also suggested that he run for a seat on council, selling him on the job saying, “They only meet once a month.”
Arguably, Lewes’ Mayor and Council hold or attend more public meetings than any other like-sized municipality in the state.
Ford said Stango’s terms as mayor included the period when Lewes began its transition from a mostly blue-collar working-class town with a menhaden fish processing plant at its economic core, to a city driven by upward-spiraling real estate.
Ford said he thought Stango did an excellent job regulating development in Lewes, particularly during the 1980s.
It was during that time that the developer of a commercial coal-receiving port sought to locate a facility in Lewes along the Delaware Bay adjacent to Cape Henlopen Drive.
Stango and then-Lewes City Councilman George H.P. Smith were among Lewes elected officials opposed to the port.
In 1976 Stango had appointed Smith to fill a city council vacancy. Stango and Smith served together on the council for 17 years. Smith was elected mayor in 1994, serving five terms before his death in 2005 at age 74.
Ford said contrary to stories of Stango’s continued ability to wield power and influence in the city, after his move to Florida contact with him was rare.
“He’d send me check for $20 or $25 for my campaign when my time came up for reelection,” he said. Ford said with one check Stango enclosed a hand-written note suggesting the city sell off some of its beachfront property so that it could have money.
In the 1970s when Fort Miles, on land now part of Cape Henlopen State Park, was under threat of closure, then-mayor Stango assured a young serviceman stationed there that the base would remain open.
“Stango said don’t even worry about it. If you want to buy a house here or build a house go ahead and do it because you’re going to be right here. That was true, we didn’t go anywhere,” said Wayne Lott in a 2005 interview.
Lott was a sonar operator then working at the U.S. Navy’s Cold War-era, secret Fort Miles listening post. Apparently, Stango knew of the base’s secret importance.
Lewes Planning Commission member Nina Cannata never served on a Stango-appointed panel, but she said as a concerned resident she often disagreed with the mayor.
“We had a variety of differing opinions – we agreed to disagree,” she said.
She said Stango “ran the city with an iron fist,” but was also able to admit to his mistakes.
Cannata said Kenneth Douty, her father, and Stango were friends and they, too, agreed to disagree.
She said Stango didn’t bear grudges and in 1991 asked if she’d let him read a tribute at a memorial service honoring her father.
“He was a hoot and a holler,” she said of Stango.
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