Dvornick draws on lifetime of experience

Eugene S. Dvornick Jr. has spent almost his whole life, literally and figuratively, creating balance and putting out fires.

As the town manager of Georgetown for nearly 20 years, Dvornick is in charge of the daily operations of the town. He helps meet the needs of a rapidly growing town, driven in part by immigrants who make up 52% of the population.

Growing up as the son of a Navy serviceman, Dvornick moved every four years, never staying long enough to grow deep roots as they relocated to states including California, Nebraska and Virginia. His longtime dream was to become a firefighter, Dvornick said.

He and a good friend decided to join the fire department where they lived in Springfield, Va., but only if they both were accepted. After he passed the physical exam and his friend did not, Dvornick delayed his plans.

Dvornick finally got his chance when he joined the Shepherdstown Fire Department while studying accounting at Shepherd University in West Virginia.

“I could run from my dorm to the firehouse,” he said.

Dvornick has continued serving in local fire departments ever since.

After graduating in 1986, he attended Virginia Tech to study for a master’s degree in accounting. During that time, he volunteered for the fire department in Blacksburg.

Soon after he graduated in August 1987, Dvornick took a job with E.I. du Pont de Nemours & Co. He chose a position in Wilmington over one in Oklahoma to live within an easy drive of family in northern New Jersey, his friends in Virginia, and close to the mountains and beach, two of his loves.

He also volunteered with the Mill Creek Fire Department in Marshallton, where he still pays annual dues but is not an active firefighter.

Dvornick transferred between several DuPont facilities for 12 years, continuing volunteering for local fire departments. He left DuPont and took a job with Draper Canning Co. in Milton in 1998 during the factory’s last two years in business. Company owner Tom Draper hired Dvornick to help oversee the residential and commercial redevelopment of the 147-acre site, much of it beyond the town line. 

While the vegetable canning plant had been a good employer, its closing was a boon for Milton, Dvornick said.

“They used coal to fire the plant, and when they fired that baby up, it put black soot over everything,” he said. “I think it was more of a perception of what the industrial user was, and that held the town back.”

Cannery Village, developed by Draper, brought in Dogfish Head Brewery and hundreds of homes. It was one of the largest multiuse developments ever in the county, Dvornick said.

“When I first moved there, you could have bought some of the old Victorians on Federal and Union streets for like $50,000.” he said. “You couldn’t give them away. Now you see that they’re $400,000 or $500,000.”

Since moving to Milton, Dvornick has been a volunteer firefighter. After serving as a firefighter, captain, assistant chief and deputy chief, he was elected chief in 2013, and this year, he was appointed to a second term.

He was elected to serve on Milton Town Council from 2004 to 2007 before leaving to become the town manager in Georgetown. He represented Milton on the Delaware League of Local Governments and Sussex County Association of Towns, making connections that help him as town manager.

Dvornick said he has taken lessons from all of his experiences, including in college, as an accountant and a firefighter.

“You leverage off the experiences in the past and what you’ve dealt with,” he said. “I always equate it to, if you’re going to go out backpacking, you know everything you’re going to need. But life’s a journey, so you pick up skills here and there, you throw them in your backpack and then you say, ‘Hey, I may have done that,’ and then you pull it out of your backpack and you can use it.”

At 50, he began a program studying for seven years to obtain a master’s degree in public administration at the University of Delaware.

While Dvornick has had visible positions in Milton and Georgetown, he said to a large extent he has remained an outsider, as a transplant from another community.

“I remember when I first got the job, I had somebody take me around who spoke Spanish, just to introduce me to local businesses,” Dvornick said. “It takes a lot to gain trust, especially from somebody that you don’t know.” 

He said in Delaware, where some families have deep local roots and there is a growing wave of newcomers, people are labeled a from-here or a come-here. He said he recently found out he may be finally bridging that gap.

“One of the business owners, I was walking down the street and he’s blowing his horn and waving, waving, waving,” Dvornick recalled. “And I said, ‘Now I know that he knows who I am and I know who he is, and I’m pretty sure he knows he can trust me. So that was a pretty good feeling.”