SOLOMONS — Children who visit the Calvert Marine Museum can leave with a small wooden boat they painted themselves. Ed Gies has made hundreds of them.
Gies, a retired Washington, D.C., police officer who has volunteered at the museum since 2008, received the Community Service Award from Calvert County’s John Hanson Chapter of the National Society Daughters of the American Revolution on Oct. 28. The chapter approved the honor in July, but schedules did not line up until last week, chapter member Laurie McBrierty told the Chronicle.
The chapter’s nomination credits Gies with more than 5,000 volunteer hours at the museum and a long list of quieter jobs at the Asbury Solomons retirement community, where he lives, and at Patuxent Presbyterian Church. It sums up his approach in his own words: “Whatever I can do, I do it.”
In the museum workshop
At the Calvert Marine Museum, Gies leads the model boat-building program and spends many hours each week in the workshop, according to the nomination. He fills in wherever help is needed.
He also staffs a display of White House Christmas ornaments and memorabilia at the museum. The chapter wrote that the exhibit gives a window into presidential history to residents who live within driving distance of Washington but have never visited the White House. The connection is personal: his father was a Secret Service driver who served administrations from Franklin D. Roosevelt through Lyndon B. Johnson.
Gies was among the volunteers the museum recognized in 2019, as the Chronicle reported at the time.
Behind the scenes at Asbury Solomons
Much of his work happens where he and his late wife, Beatrice, moved in December 2007. According to the nomination, Gies:
- Sets up for Betty’s Closet resale events, which bring in about $2,500 each and roughly $17,500 to $18,000 a year for the community’s Benevolent Fund. Over the past decade, the sales have raised more than $135,000 to help residents stay in their homes during financial hardship.
- Helps plan and run four annual parties for residents: New Year’s Eve, the Super Bowl, the Kentucky Derby and Oktoberfest.
- Operates the pool lift for residents who need help getting in the water.
- Sets up, records and plays the daily devotions aired on the community’s in-house TV network.
- Builds and repairs pieces for the model train club’s Christmas display and hangs the resident art shows held every four months, which include his own paintings.
Painting came late. His family gave him oil paints for his 50th birthday, and the supplies sat in an attic for some 30 years until he took lessons after moving to Asbury and finished his first oil painting in 2008, according to a 2017 profile in the community’s newsletter. He favors boats, water and lighthouses.
A stage for 120 children
Each summer, Gies helps Patuxent Presbyterian Church get ready for Vacation Bible School, though he is not a member of the congregation. David L. Porter, who directs the program for about 120 children, wrote in a recommendation letter that Gies helped build and assemble the 20-by-9-foot main stage and then helped take it down and move it to another church for its own Bible school. Gies also paints oil scenes of the week’s events.
Porter, who also lives at Asbury Solomons, described him as patient, humble and technically skilled.
A life of service
Gies grew up in the Washington area and served 22 years with the D.C. Metropolitan Police Department before retiring in 1980 to manage his family’s properties after his father’s death. He and Beatrice, who died in 2023, volunteered with the United Methodist Church’s Volunteers in Mission program and completed 52 missions in Africa and across the United States, sometimes two or three trips a year.
The John Hanson Chapter, based in Prince Frederick, is the only DAR chapter in Calvert County and was founded in 1965, according to the chapter. Members at the presentation included Regent Kris Strauss, Vice Regent Sharon Guest, past Regent Kathy Miller, Anne Marum, Joanna Bothel, Marie McConnell and Sarah Bloom.
