Recognition of Bart Charlow

Floor Speech

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Ms. SPEIER. Madam Speaker, I rise today to recognize a 1960's Borscht Belt Baby who, of late, has been a distinguished individual serving turkey with all the trimmings in San Mateo County. Bart Charlow, the Chief Executive Officer of Samaritan House, is retiring after eight years on the front lines of human services. We will miss him enormously.

Samaritan House annually serves clients 3,000,000 meals, provides 44,120 nights of safe shelter, and during the time of Bart's leadership increased donations by 100 percent. Samaritan House provides a place for people without fixed housing to recover from hospital care. He led the agency to create a food pantry, added mental health services to the existing medical clinics, doubled food services, quintupled case management and financial assistance, and managed temporary operations of four additional shelter programs--a tripling of shelter capacity during COVID.

The stories told by Samaritan House clients are America's stories. For example, 72-year-old Edwina and Demitrio were living in their car, trying to live on their combined Social Security checks in one of the most costly housing markets in America. They discovered Samaritan House. Due to its free services, they were able to save some money. Then, they were selected for a unit in a new affordable housing complex, a hotel purchased through federal funding. To a large extent, this couple can credit Bart Charlow, and the outstanding staff and volunteers of Samaritan House, for being a rock they could cling to when the storm of pestilence swept them into an economic sea.

During Thanksgiving, I've personally worked next to Bart as we and dozens of volunteers distributed thousands of pounds of holiday groceries to clients. At Christmas during the pandemic, hundreds of families drove through the county fairgrounds picking up free gifts and food. In pre-pandemic times, Bart and volunteers, including me, would wrap hundreds of Christmas presents for children anxious to take their bounty home to place under the tree. Samaritan House is an official portal for safety net services for San Mateo County because the county trusts this agency's management to handle millions of dollars in contracts for services. Its staff follows Bart's belief: Respect human dignity and lift people up.

Bart's come a long way from watching his extended family serve tourists at Charlow's Irvington Hotel in South Fallsburg, New York.

Bart is a painter, and images of the Catskills leap from his canvas. Borscht Belt Babies, a Facebook group, confirms that Bart's upbringing was one of family and a tight-knit community. I was struck by a 1963 photo taken at Charlow's Irvington Hotel. It showed three handsome young men in the shallow end of the swimming pool on what was likely a hot summer day. Two were white and one black. 1963 was the year of the March on Washington and the ``I Have A Dream'' speech by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. It was also the year that Jackson, Mississippi, drained four public swimming pools and sold another rather than integrate them. At Charlow's Irvington Hotel, all Americans were welcomed and equal. Of the kitchen, Bart remarked, ``I could spend hours watching the baker make batter and knead dough in the giant mixers . . . . he'd fill [baking trays] with hundreds of perfectly shaped little cookies or mounds of bread rolls in just minutes.'' I bet the borscht was also great.

Bart joined Samaritan House in 2014. He was 65, a time when others hope to retire. However, Bart is deeply dedicated to philanthropy and brought with him 39 years of executive experience, largely in the non- profit sector. He was also a licensed marriage and family therapist for 42 years, certainly excellent preparation for leading a non-profit. He has a BA in Anthropology and Sociology from Wake Forest University and a Master's in Education and Counseling, also from Wake Forest.

Please join me in wishing Bart Charlow the time of his life in retirement with his wife Nancy, their sons Alex and Michael and daughter Lisa. Gevald, di mantens! [Wow, the mountains!] is a Yiddish song celebrating the Catskills. One of the lines is that, in the mountains, ``Everybody rests their bones.'' Well, now it's Bart's turn. He may seek his retirement by resting his bones, but he will never truly rest until his fellow Americans are also safe, their health secure, and their weary bones afforded a cooling retreat in the shade created by human dignity.

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