Sports
Season
IR soccer player remembered
Live Nativity captures the season’s reason
Page 68
Page 32
DECEMBER 22, 2023
THE LOCAL VOICE OF YOUR COMMUNITY.
Is Fenwick dredging project nearing a reality?
Volume 20, Issue 51
FREE
‘It just happened’
By Kerin Magill Staff Reporter A dredging project years in the planning is inching closer to reality, despite a “one step forward and two back” type of situation which recently came to the town’s attention, according to the Fenwick Island official who leads the town’s Dredging Committee. The project would address issues in two channels leading to the Little Assawoman Bay that have caused problems for years for boaters coming in and out of the bay from their bayside docks. Dredging Committee Chairman William Rymer told the Fenwick Island Town Council earlier this month that “on the good news front, we received official acceptance and approval from the historical review and field study report that we did” on the potential dredge See DREDGING page 2
School board discusses boundaries, training
Coastal Point • Kerin Magill
This Christmas card is taking its 70th voyage this year between two local families, who have seen the treasured tradition continue down to a second generation of card-sharers.
By Mike Smith Staff Reporter The Indian River School District Board of Education this week looked at the issue of administrative staff handling of student conduct issues and ensuring conflicts are de-escalated by using constables and school resource officers to clarify the roles of staff. The first reading of an updated school resource policy includes tighter guidance on physical contacts as well as social media connections by staff and students. Sussex Central High School hosted the final board meeting of the year on Monday, Dec. 18. The IRSD policy review also included updates on sexual contacts and harassment following closely on an incident between a Laurel School District teaching assistant in the chemistry labs and a junior student at Laurel High School. See IRSD page 2
For 70 years, two families have shared Christmas card By Kerin Magill Staff Reporter It’s a small Christmas card, a bit worn, bearing a picture of a pig-tailed child wearing red pajamas. She’s kneeling, and there’s just the tiniest part of a manger visible at the edge of the card. On the inside, the printed message “O Come Let Us Adore Him” is surrounded by handwritten rows of names. Those names tell the real story of the card, which must be unfolded — gingerly now, because the paper has deteriorated along the folds. There, rows of names and dates cover almost every surface, beginning in 1954. The names are not those of the senders — at least not originally. “We’re putting our grandkids, our kids’ spouses, all that, on it,” Hurley said. For the first 20 or so years, the only names were those of Hurley and her brother Billy, and Helen and Tommy Steele. They were the children of actual senders of the card —
Wanda Powell and Betty Steele. Hurley took over card duty from her mom in 1997, she said. Helen Lareau eventually took over from her mother, Steele. The names on the card tell a kind of haphazard history of the two families — for example, Hurley got married in 1972 but her husband’s name didn’t appear on it until five years later. Other milestones, such as the death of Hurley’s brother Billy in 1987, can be traced by his absence from that year forward. But happier occasions such as births and marriages, seem to show up, if not right away, in the ever-growing lists of names. “It’s a special little card,” Hurley said. With the recent passing of her mother, Hurley feels even more responsibility to make sure it makes its next journey. “She just loved this card,” she said of her mother. “She wanted everybody to see it.” Although she said she has kept the card in a lockbox for years, “there was one year,” as the holiday approached, “that I started searching” and she couldn’t find it. She called Lareau at her home in Hockessin and asked if she had the card. She See CARD page 7