NARROWSBURG – The Upper Delaware Council (UDC) is pleased to announce the hiring of Sara-Jo Fegley of Narrowsburg, NY as administrative assistant.

Fegley started her position on October 26 after having served as a National Park Service Upper Delaware Scenic and Recreational River park ranger, an Army veteran, and an environmental educator with over 10 years of experience in public service.

“I bring to the UDC a genuine understanding of the importance of partnership. Protecting the Upper Delaware depends on effective collaboration among municipalities, government agencies, nonprofits, landowners, educators, volunteers, and community members. I appreciate that the UDC’s overall mission centers around the river. Conservation and stewardship are not only personal values of mine but ones that I want to help prolong for future generations and to find a space where I feel I can make a difference,” she says.

Fegley hails from Pennsylvania’s Lehigh Valley.

“I come from a generation of river people. My family’s PA roots are documented back to the French & Indian War and William Penn land grants. I am grounded in my family heritage within the Lenapehoking and especially the river,” she says.

During high school, Fegley participated in the Junior Reserve Officers’ Training Corps (JROTC) and applied to join the AmeriCorps NCCC program for 18-24-year-olds in 2008, doing outreach, trail building, disaster relief recovery, and tax preparation services in Denver, CO and southwestern U.S. Fegley won a Presidential Volunteer Award for Civic Engagement in 2009 based on her direct community service hours.

Fegley enlisted as a soldier in the PA Army National Guard, working in military intelligence from 2010 to 2018.

Simultaneous to her Army service and working from 2014-2020 as a U.S. Department of Justice IT litigation support analyst in the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Philadelphia, PA, she attended night classes to earn an Associate’s degree in Military Intelligence Operations, then a 2020 Bachelor’s degree in Science (studying Criminology and Informatics) from Drexel University. She then worked as an IT litigation specialist from 2020-2021 in the U.S. Attorney’s Office based in Norfolk, VA.

Fegley took a major career turn after the COVID pandemic, wishing to get back to nature after growing up with a profound appreciation for the outdoors.

She taught outdoor skills and folk art at the Appalachian Bushman School, became a whitewater river trip leader and biking guide for a Poconos outfitter, an expedition field instructor for Philadelphia Outward Bound (including weeks-long Delaware River canoe trips), and was employed as a rescue and safety technician.

In 2024, Fegley went to work for the U.S. Forest Service as an interpretation field ranger at Grey Towers National Historic Site, followed by two seasons at the NPS Upper Delaware in 2024 and 2025. She was part of the interpretive river roving team who earned the UDC’s Robin M. Daniels Memorial Lifesaving Award in 2025, the same year that she received a Nature Inspiring Courage and Kindness scholarship from the Reeno Foundation and a Story Catcher oral history course full scholarship from the John C. Campbell Folk School.

She moved from Milford, PA to Narrowsburg in January 2024.

Fegley, who is an American Canoe Association instructor with safety and rescue certifications, has paddled the entire 73.4 miles of the bi-state Upper Delaware Scenic and Recreational River and averages about 300 miles a year in the orange canoe that is at the ready atop her beloved 1986 Volkswagen camper van.

She also enjoys fishing, fly-tying, hiking, traditional camping, folk arts and crafting, storytelling as a National Association for Interpretation certified interpretive guide, and reading, particularly the history genre.

Reach Fegley at sara-jo@upperdelawarecouncil.org or (845) 252-3022.                           

For more information on the non-profit organization’s history and activities, please visit www.upperdelawarecouncil.org/ and its Facebook and Instagram social media.