Dewey Beach's smiling face behind the counter

Walk into Dewey Beach town hall on any given day and you're bound to get the impression everyday is Casual Friday.

Town employees are dressed like they've fully embraced the town's beach life style and are taking a page out of Town Manager Marc Appelbaum's book of styling. He's a man whose choice of footwear is rarely anything other than flip-flops.

The exception to the rule is longtime town administrator Joyce Pool, who for the past 26 years has greeted residents and visitors of town hall dressed in stylish business professional outfits. On the day of this interview, Pool had on a tan top with matching heels, a black jacket, and leopard-print slacks to spice it up.

“I'll dress casual too, but it's kind of what I'm used to. There's really no other reason,” she said matter-of-factly.

Pool, who will be 74 in November, began working for the town as a three-day-a-week employee in May of 1988. The town itself was only officially incorporated in 1981.

Pool had recently moved to Bethany from Wilmington with her husband, Roger, and took the job to keep busy. She had been retired for a year before the move.

“I just answered an ad,” she said. “It was just something to do. I wasn't used to not working.”

Pool had already worked 23 years as a secretary for an engineering department manager in the Louviers building at DuPont.

“It was an entirely different atmosphere,” she said with a chuckle when asked to recall her first few days on the job in Dewey. “DuPont was very technical, very regimented. Working here and working with engineers is an entirely different spectrum.”

Pool is proof that old habits die hard. Despite having not worked for DuPont for nearly 30 years, she always remains prepared. She brought her 7-inch-thick town personnel file to the interview just incase she needed specific dates.

Pool has worked on the town administration side since 1997 but was originally hired by former Dewey Beach Police Chief Karl Klink Jr. to take care of the parking tickets for the town.

“The officers were very helpful with the transition,” she said.

There was no a full-time dispatcher working for the department, so if a person called and all the officers were out on another call, Pool had to answer the phones.

At the time of her hire, town hall was a small cottage.

“People would come in to get permits and tell us they used to rent the place,” she said.

At a number public meetings over the past year Police Chief Sam Mackert has said the police department's holding areas need to be enlarged. Pool remembers when there was no holding cell at all, and the drunks that got arrested were hand-cuffed to the bench next to one of the filing cabinets.

“We saw some sad things,” she said. “One fella thought he was Superman and tried to put his head through that old wooden filing cabinet. There were a whole lot of different situations.”

Pool has worked with her fair share of employees over the years, including four police chiefs, five town managers and at least four mayors. The one constant through the years has been Penny Garnett, who was hired seven months after Pool, in December of 1988, and is still working for the town. The two women have grown close over the years. In fact, in 2008, Garnett won a dinner-for-two contest sponsored by a local radio station and she took Pool to Australia.

“We'd love to go back,” she said.

Another one of her favorite co-workers was a stray tuxedo cat named Zipper. There are at least two paintings of the cat in town hall, and Pool has an almost-life-sized replica of a tuxedo cat on the bookshelf of her desk.

She just appeared one day, Pool said of Zipper, and we just kind of took care of her. She would sit in the window right by desk.

“It was a neat thing,” she said. “There's no way to replace her.”

As a town administrator, Pool says she does a little bit of everything. There's filling out parking permits, dog licenses, paper work for town officials, the billing cycles for different town ordinances, the town newsletters and town elections.

“There's always something to do,” she said. “It doesn't sound very exciting but it is.”

She's one of two faces people see when coming to fill out permits. The other is town clerk Ashleigh Hudson. She takes pride in helping people who might be frustrated with spending more money on permits than anticipated.

“A spoon full of sugar,” she said, showing off her disarming smile. “We're here to serve the public, and we do the best we can.”

That said, she's not afraid to direct people to the police department if they have issues that need to be handled by them.

“Some will come in with that bright orange parking ticket, and we'll point to right across the hall,” she said.

Pool's husband died two years ago, and she said people thought she was going to retire then, but she doesn't have any plans to.

“I like to keep busy. I'm not one to just sit around,” she said. Pool is also active with Epworth United Methodist Church's Hospitality Committee. She's been a member since 1989.

When she does decide to stop working for the town, she's already got her next job in mind.

“I always thought it would be nice to work at a florist,” she said. Her florist of choice would be Windsor's Flowers in Rehoboth. “It's such a nice atmosphere. It's just something I'd like to do. Go in there and sweep up and be around all those flowers.”

Until that time comes though, Pool will joyfully assist the residents, visitors, employees and elected officials of Dewey Beach – dressed for work at DuPont, but with an outlook on life that’s all beach.