Commentary

Commentary Ocean City Today June 17, 2022 Page 53 Assessing blame in deputy’s death

There’s plenty of blame to go around in the tragic death of Wicomico County Sheriff’s Office Deputy First Class Glenn Hilliard, a family man with a wife and three children, who was shot and killed Sunday in the line of duty.

Charged with his murder is Austin Davidson, 20, the Delmar man who led the 16-year law enforcement veteran on a brief chase before turning on him and opening fire, according to police reports.

What infuriates many law enforcement professionals is that Davidson, who was being sought on multiple warrants, was even out on the streets after being given a suspended sentence and probation in 2019 for his armed robbery of a fastfood restaurant in Baltimore.

Obviously, had he been in jail or prison, none of this would have happened, and a man with so much life ahead of him would have returned home to his family at the end of the day.

The problem is that’s just one contributing factor. Bear in mind Davidson was wanted in four jurisdictions, including Worcester County for failing to appear in court on other charges.

Baltimore wasn’t the only jurisdiction where he could have been locked up. There were other opportunities to get him off the streets if only for a few months.

This doesn’t mean the judicial system is broken. It’s that judges can only guess what someone is capable of doing based on that person’s past actions and circumstances.

As circumstances go, armed robbery is an extremely serious one, and, yes, Davidson should have been sent to prison for it. But even then, knowing what we do now, we can envision a scenario in which Davidson did do time for robbery, only to emerge from prison and kill someone else.

We just can’t know these things. In fact, all we know for sure is that Deputy Hillard had his life taken away from him, and his family lost a husband and father. We can only imagine their sorrow and say it’s a sad, sad day for all of us, including the people who could have put his assailant away but for reasons known only to them, did not.

Ocean City Today

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EDITOR ............................................ Stewart Dobson MANAGING EDITOR................................ Lisa Capitelli STAFF WRITERS .................................... Greg Wehner, ..........................................Jack Chavez, Mallory Panuska ACCOUNT MANAGERS.......... Mary Cooper, Vicki Shrier ..............................................................Amanda Shick CLASSIFIEDS/LEGALS MANAGER .... Nancy MacCubbin SENIOR DESIGNER ................................ Susan Parks GRAPHIC ARTIST .................................... Kelly Brown PUBLISHER........................................ Christine Brown ADMINISTRATIVE ASSISTANT ...................... Gini Tufts

PUBLIC EYE What’s in a name?

What’s in a name? A lot, apparently, considering all the name changing that’s taking place among organizations, sports teams, institutions and, of course, people. I even considered changing mine a while back when I thought I was important but was advised that “Mr. Big” had already been taken by a television character to connote something significantly different than what I wanted to convey. Besides, few people are as important as they think they are, as I came to understand some years ago when I came home after a day of making what I thought were command decisions only to be humbled by nature itself.

That would be via a bird that dropped everything it had smack in the middle of my glass as I walked the yard with a tumbler of not-cheap Scotch in my hand. If that doesn’t remind you of your place in the universe, nothing will.

This particular bird didn’t pause to think, “Hmmm, is that the always serviceable Johnnie Walker Red at $25 or the exceptionally well-crafted Johnnie Walker Blue at $199.99?”

No, it did not. It just let go and by virtue of a conspiracy of gravity, wind speed, direction and possibly the rotation of Earth itself, its payload followed a flight path directly — and I mean directly — into the dead center of my glass.

One kerplunk and it’s “goodbye not-cheap scotch and hello you wee blooter.” Which means pretty much what it sounds like. Anyway, no amount of name changing alters who you are, although who you are sometimes necessitates a name change. I read this week, for instance, that the Maryland Firemen’s Association is considering changing its name to the Maryland Firefighter’s Association to recognize the association’s growing number of women firefighters — and fire chiefs, for that matter. That makes sense to me because it reflects By real circumstances. On the other hand, take Stewart the Washington Commanders (please). They aren’t commanding much of anyDobson thing these days, so a truth-in-naming convention would suggest their name could be the Washington Pvts. Or Privates, if you really think you can get away with it. The George Washington Colonials also are on the way to changing their nickname to something that doesn’t suggest a land grab by a bunch of foreign imperialists, while Five Guys has been listed by one moniker monitor as a candidate for change because of gender bias (Five Persons? Five Individuals? Five Theys?). I get it, I really do, but I also know that words are just assemblies of letters to which we assign attributes, meanings and connotations that change over time in good and bad ways according to current thinking and frequency of use. It’s like when that bird did his number in Ocean City Today is published weekly by FLAG Publications, Inc. my drink. It’s funny as all get-out now, but it 11934 Ocean Gateway, Suite 6, Ocean City, Md. 21842 was completely unacceptable at the time.

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PRAYER SERVICE

The 24th annual Ocean City Beach Patrol prayer service to begin the summer 2022 season took place at 7 a.m. on May 28. The OCBP and others involved in public safety and emergency response in the Ocean City area gathered to pray for residents and visitors and those involved in public safety and emergency response for a safe and successful season.

Three-party partnership protects waterbirds

(June 17, 2022) The partnership of Maryland Department of Natural Resources (DNR), Audubon Mid-Atlantic, and Maryland Coastal Bays Program is continuing an innovative conservation project to preserve three of Maryland’s state listed endangered colonial nesting waterbirds - the Common Tern, Royal Tern, and Black Skimmer.

The project, now in its second year, is providing a floating woodenframed platform as a nesting site for endangered colonial waterbirds, which have declined by a staggering 90-95 percent since the mid-1980s due to sea level rise and the erosion of their natural barren sand nesting islands in the coastal bays.

The initial year of the project was an immediate success. The platform was used for nesting by 23 pairs of Common Terns, making it the largest breeding colony of this species in the Coastal Bays in 2021.

“The immediate success of the project is encouraging,” said Director of Bird Conservation Dr. David Curson of Audubon Mid-Atlantic. “But the fact that the largest Common Tern colony in the coastal bays system last year was on this small artificial island illustrates just how dire the situation is for these birds. In 2003, there were more than 500 pairs of Common Terns nesting at six natural colony sites in the coastal bays – today, most of these former sites have been degraded by erosion and some have been washed away entirely.”

This year, the partnership has expanded the size of the nesting platform from 1,024 square feet to 2,304 square feet, by adding five new raft sections to the four used in 2021.

The rafts are latched together in a square formation that flexes at the joints as waves roll beneath it. This design allows the platform to safely withstand large waves and strong winds during storm events.

The project team hopes the larger platform will not only support a bigger tern colony, but also may attract Black Skimmers to nest alongside them.

The project team has also expanded in 2022. Maryland Coastal Bays Program hired Archer Larned, Ph.D., to the newly created position of Coastal Bird Habitat coordinator to assist with the project, using funds provided by US Wind.

“We will monitor the platform closely through the 2022 breeding season,” said Larned. “Early signs are encouraging. Remote cameras installed on the platform show that about 50 Common Terns are already using it for roosting, and we are hoping that nesting activity will begin See RAFTS Page 55

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Pat Arata, center, and Jacqueline Spurrier, left, were each recently presented with certificates marking 40 years of dedicated service to the Daughters of the American Revolution. Both are members of the General Levin Winder Chapter. They are pictured with Chapter Regent Gail Weldin.

Rafts give waterbirds sanctuary

Continued from Page 55 soon.”

Dave Brinker, of Maryland DNR Wildlife and Heritage Service, has been monitoring colonial nesting waterbird populations in Maryland since 1985.

“This project shows great promise in offering endangered colonial waterbirds much-needed nesting sites,”Brinker said.“But in order to fully recover and sustain populations of terns and skimmers in the coastal bays it is essential that we restore and maintain former sand islands that have been lost to erosion. To achieve that we will need a long-term strategy that allocates locally dredged sand for island restoration.”

DNR’s Wildlife and Heritage Service is providing technical assistance, materials, and funding through federal Pittman-Robertson funds that the state receives from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

Match for these federal funds comes from Maryland Program Open Space funds used to purchase land for state Wildlife Management Areas and from the Chesapeake Bay and Endangered Species fund (state income tax checkoff).

Audubon Mid-Atlantic and Audubon’s Seabird Institute are providing technical support and assistance with planning, coordination, and raft construction under a contract with DNR. Maryland Coastal Bays Program is assisting with local support, planning, coordination, and providing local volunteer assistance.

“Addressing the population declines of these important bird species is a high priority for our department and our partners,” said Jeannie Haddaway-Riccio, secretary of the Maryland Department of Natural Resources. “We are pleased to support innovative measures and longterm efforts to give them the best possible chance to rebound.”

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WORLD WAR II British air raid annihilates Cologne

By Peter Ayers Wimbrow III Contributing Writer (June 17, 2022) This week, 80 years ago, the Royal Air Force was preparing to launch its third, and final, “Thousand Plane Raid” — code named Operation Millennium — against the Fatherland.

These raids were the brainchild of newly appointed head of Bomber Command, Arthur Harris, who was appointed in February.

For this and other schemes, Harris would earn the sobriquet, “Bomber.”

The impetus for these raids was publicity -ueled revenge for the damage done to London, Coventry and other southern English cities by the Luftwaffe.

Another reason was turf protection. There had been calls to break up Bomber Command because of studies showing a paucity of accuracy in its missions, and divert its resources to other areas, such as the antisubmarine campaign.

It was thought that a headlinegrabbing operation such as Operation Millennium would save the command.

The first target had been the ancient city of Cologne.

Originally, the target had been Hamburg, but weather considerations forced Bomber Command to switch targets.

Hamburg would get its due from Bomber Command a year later, when it was firebombed and virtually destroyed, killing more than 42,000.

With a population of 700,000, Cologne was the Reich’s third largest city.

On the night of May 30, 1942, 1,046 British bombers delivered 2,000 tons of high explosive and incendiary bombs. Within 90 minutes, downtown Cologne was utterly destroyed, together with 13,000 residences and 36 factories.

Luftwaffe Chief Reichsmarshal Hermann Göring, who had guaranteed that the Reich would never be bombed, refused to believe the reports saying, “ . . . it is impossible! That many bombs cannot be dropped in a single night!”

Author Daniel Swift described the result: “Cologne was perfectly ruined, and what survived, like the front of the great Cathedral, stood only to mark the loss.”

Of the 469 deaths, most were civilians. The day following the raid, British Prime Minister, Sir Winston S. Churchill, telegraphed President Franklin D. Roosevelt, saying, “I hope you were pleased with our mass air attack on Cologne. There is plenty more to come.”

The prime minister told Harris that, “... this proof of the growing power of Britain’s Bomber Force is also a herald of what Germany will receive, city by city, from now on.”

Since Bomber Command only had 416 “first-line” bombers, it had to really scrape to get to the magic number.

Most of the balance came from Operational Training Units. Air Marshal Harris had also expected to use 250 bombers from Coastal Command, which was under the command of the Royal Navy.

But, before the raid, the Admiralty, after having initially agreed, refused to allow Coastal Command’s planes to participate, reasoning that the publicity was not worth risking an important part of its U-boat defense system.

Harris eventually crewed enough planes with instructors and pupils to get to the number. Assembling 1,000 bombers, in the dark, without mishap, was an enormous undertaking.

British bombers began taking off from 53 bases at 10:30 p.m. By the time the last groups of bombers began to arrive over the target, the fires could be seen from a distance of 100 miles.

Bomber Command suffered a 4 percent loss, which was deemed high, but acceptable.

Interestingly, the planes piloted by the students suffered a lower loss rate than those piloted by the veterans! One Victoria’s Cross (British equivalent of the Medal of Honor) was awarded, posthumously, to Leslie Thomas Manser, for the Cologne Raid.

Two nights later, Bomber Command targeted Essen for its second “Thousand Plane Raid.”

It is a city on the Ruhr River and today has a population of 579,000, making it the ninth largest city in Germany.

During the war, it was a major in-

Statue of Harris outside St. Clement Danes

Continued on Page 57