Rehoboth Gone Wild: Inside the Insane Feud in a Delaware Beach Town

In the weeks before the rally, Kelley Gillespie threw herself into its organization with the savvy of the seasoned planner of Washington events that she is.

She and her team plotted out what props would make for the most provocative TV clips. They ordered T-shirts—an eye-catching chili-pepper red—and cooked up a social-media campaign. On June 16 last year, Gillespie posted a photo of her sons staring seriously into the camera in the manner of Michelle Obama with her “Bring Back Our Girls” placard, but with a communiqué that was rather less serious.

“REHOBOTH,” one of the signs read, “where it’s a CRIME to be a KID.”

With that, the Great Rehoboth Pool Battle was on.

It all started with the sort of mundane ordinance proposal that might normally slip past most of Rehoboth’s 1,400 year-round residents, not to mention its 150,000 weekenders. But in this case, it became something impossible to ignore: Under the bill, people who rented houses with pools wouldn’t be allowed to swim in those pools.

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