I am happy to see that Rehoboth has done the right thing which I figured it would do when I wrote last fall about the great person new Mayor Stan Mills is. I’ve known Stan a lot longer than most people in Rehoboth have, and his commitment to the public good is genuine; that includes but is not limited to his many years working as a volunteer with the Red Cross.
Stan’s selection of Jeff Giles to be the long-overdue new captain of the Rehoboth Beach Patrol is genius. I guarded with Jeff and was involved in a number of other endeavors with him including the cross-training program Woody Marderwald and I worked on to bring together beach patrols, State Police air and water sections, U.S. Coast Guard, Sussex EMS, Delaware National Guard, Delaware “amateur” (really volunteer professional) radio operators and a number of other groups in a positive synergy and trust between all concerned which gets far more for the taxpayers’ dollars than when there was no such cooperation. That program produced the national “Break the Grip of the Rip” project which Woody and I, NOAA, the U.S. Lifesaving Association and the U.S. Public Health Service provided one year to develop. Our educational boards can be seen on most entrances to surf beaches around the entire country; the first were in Rehoboth and Dewey. As part of this, we had the U.S. Surgeon General, a former ocean lifeguard, visit and participate in our program, including having him jump out of a DSP helicopter into the ocean with a DSP watercraft standing by to conduct simulated rescues. We hope to do similar in the future. Reinforcing these efforts have been Jeff Giles’ brilliant expansion of the Delaware State Police water program with which Jeff has served as commander for a number of years.
This background, combined with his substantial service on the RBP together with his brother, Jason, have rendered Jeff as probably the most highly qualified person to head any beach patrol in the U.S. or elsewhere. Jeff has the trust and commitment of all who work with him, and he is an inspirational leader who puts teamwork and safety over everything else.
Jeff is a person of the highest integrity and has unselfishly risked his neck again and again to help others in extremely dangerous situations. We are very lucky that Jeff is still living and that he is now commander of the RBP which will flourish under his leadership.
Best of luck to RBP Captain Jeff Giles in his new career. I urge the city to provide him with the most support possible. I am certainly ready to do as we have done with our interagency team-building cooperative efforts.
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