Cindy Lovett Honored with Volunteer of the Year Award

April 24, 2026

At the April 22 Chamber of Commerce awards luncheon, Rehoboth in Bloom founder and longtime active member in the community Cindy Lovett was awarded with the inaugural Rehoboth Beach Volunteer of the Year Award. Mayor Stan Mills gave the speech to recognize and thank Cindy for her hard work and dedication to the City of Rehoboth Beach, and City Manager Taylour Tedder was also on hand to appreciate Cindy.

Mayor Stan Mills’ Speech for Chamber awards ceremony April 22, 2026 lauding Cindy Lovett
It is my pleasure as mayor to recognize a resident of Rehoboth Beach as our first ever volunteer of the year. This person was selected based on a variety of volunteer activities and also on the magnitude of one specific activity that grew from a few seeds into thousands of beautiful blooms, literally. Please join me in congratulating Cindy Lovett.
Cindy and her husband Paul have a lengthy background in Rehoboth Beach. They moved here in 2007 – 19 years ago. They rebuilt the McQuays building which now houses Egg Restaurant and they constructed not one but two houses of their dreams – a single-family house overlooking Egg Restaurant’s patio and a second house across the street that they built for the birds literally- well really its’s a chimney built on the canal bank to house Chimney Swifts.

Just four years after moving here full time Cindy joined the Rehoboth Beach Streets and Transportation Committee where she served for 8 years. Cindy says her most memorable and lasting project was getting scooters off the sidewalks and creating premier parking spots for the scooters.
In 2018 Cindy joined the board of Rehoboth Beach Main Street where she served for the maximum allowed 6 years but remains active as an ex-officio of the Main Street board. After visiting Lake Placid, NY and seeing their beautiful flowers, Cindy and others visited Bethany Beach and Lewes in Bloom to look at their flower programs and doing so was the main driver of Rehoboth in Bloom getting off the ground and into flower planters!

At Rehoboth in Bloom’s initial meeting in 2019, 25 interested people showed up. The program sprouted from 30 rectangular flower planters. And just 7 years later, Cindy assists in managing 84 volunteers, maintaining 112 planters and 4 gardens, including the one at the Museum at the entrance to the city.
Besides establishing a “sponsorship” program to fund the planters and plants, in 2022, Rehoboth in Bloom kicked off what is now their extremely successful fundraiser ― the Bloomin Dance Party. Their 5th dance was held April 17 (just last week) which, you guessed it, Cindy fully dug into.
Cindy has volunteered locally for Read Aloud.
In 2024 Cindy was pleased to “pay it forward” by helping the folks in Dewey start their own Dewey in Bloom.
Cindy has assisted on the task force for the Rehoboth Beach Post Office project and she has assisted with a fundraiser Cabaret for Cape Henlopen Senior Center.
She cares deeply about the City of Rehoboth Beach and wants it to thrive.
Cindy is a bundle of energy and we all are benefactors of that energy. That is her super-flower-power.
Cindy, it is with appreciation that we recognize you today as Rehoboth Beach’s 2026 Volunteer of the Year.

― Mayor Stan Mills