[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 32 (Tuesday, February 21, 1995)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E392-E393]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]


                          SERVICE WITH A SMILE

                                 ______


                          HON. PHILIP M. CRANE

                              of illinois

                    in the house of representatives

                       Tuesday, February 21, 1995
  Mr. CRANE: Mr. Speaker, Mayor Charlene Beyer of Round Lake Park, IL, 
exemplifies the many qualities which all Americans today should strive 
to attain. Mrs. Beyer embodies a sound work ethic, profamily values, 
and she is an upstanding citizen as well as a fellow public servant.
  I commend to the attention of my colleagues the following article 
entitled, ``Service With a Smile,'' found in the January 8, 1995, issue 
of the Chicago Tribune. May we all adopt and practice these superior 
values in the hopes of setting the appropriate pattern for future 
generations in America and our Government.
                [From the Chicago Tribune, Jan. 8, 1995]

Service With a Smile--Meet Charlene Beyer, waitress and Mayor of Round 
                               Lake Park

                            (By Lauren May)

       Round Lake Park Mayor Charlene Beyer has been serving her 
     community for about a year and a half, but she's been serving 
     customers at Mers restaurant in Wauconda longer than that.
       To supplement her mayoral income which averages out to be 
     about 50 cents an hour, Beyer waits tables every weekend at 
     the family eatery.
       To Beyer, 37, mother of five, it's a living.
       ``I wake up with a bad back like every other waitress 
     does,'' Beyer said. ``To me, it's my life. I don't think it's 
     an easy one, but I know that that's the life I'm living, and 
     I would work five nights if I had to to get my kids where 
     they need to go. And that's basically what I'll have to do.''
       Beyer said waiting tables is probably the best way to earn 
     some extra cash in a short period of time.
       ``I can make on the weekends what girls in an office make 
     in a whole week,'' she explained. ``I can't take 40 hours out 
     of my week and go work for something I can do in two 
     nights.''
       Time constraints dictate the type of second job Beyer can 
     have, because she home-schools three of her children. About 
     six to eight hours of each weekday is devoted to her three 
     youngest children, ages 8, 10 and 12. She also has a 16-year-
     old in high school and a 15-year-old who attends a 
     performing-arts school in Michigan.
       Most nights during the week she is off to a board meeting, 
     and on some weekend days she attends village events, so her 
     mayoral duties can occupy from 15 to 30 hours of her time 
     each week. She also is the Avon Township chairwoman of the 
     Republican Party.
       Beyer said she thinks most people in her village do not 
     know about her moonlighting job as a waitress, but regular 
     patrons of the Wauconda landmark on the shores of Bangs Lake 
     know her well.
       ``I think she's a wonderful lady,'' said Rep. Al Salvi (R-
     Wauconda), whose office is just down the street from the 
     restaurant. ``She is a real genuine person.''
       Like many of the restaurant's ``regulars,'' Salvi said he 
     often requests Beyer to be his waitress. He said the job 
     gives her the opportunity to mingle with people, including 
     local politicians who frequent the establishment. But most of 
     all, Salvi said, it proves that she is just a regular person.
       ``She's one of us,'' he said. ``She's the kind of mayor 
     every village should have.''
       Round Lake Park Village Board member June Bessert sees 
     Beyer's dual jobs as ``proof that you can hold a higher 
     office no matter what your calling in life is. I really see 
     nothing wrong in that; it's an honest way of earning a 
     living. She's very intelligent.''
       And according to her boss, Beyer is the kind of mayor every 
     restaurant should have.
       ``She's good PR for us.'' Rosemary Mers said, ``We like 
     telling everybody that the mayor will ``wait on you 
     tonight.''
       Customers at first don't always believe that the major of a 
     nearby town is serving them dinner. ``At first they think 
     we're teasing,'' Mers said. ``They're flattered.''
       Mers hired Beyer about five years ago, before Beyer had any 
     aspirations of becoming Round Lake Park mayor. After she was 
     elected, Mers said she was not surprised when Beyer told her 
     she wanted to keep her waitressing position.
       ``A long time ago, that's how government was,'' Beyer said. 
     ``It wasn't the attorneys and the professional people that 
     were doing it; it was just the common people that went in and 
     made a difference.''
       Although heading a town with a population of about 4,500 
     and serving steak and lobster to restaurant patrons may seem 
     to be on opposite ends of the employment spectrum, Beyer 
     contends that there are few differences between her dual 
     occupations.
       ``I feel [they're] very similar,'' she said, listing their 
     likenesses.``The customer is always right. You're there to 
     serve them. The demands are many. They want, as most people 
     want now, instant solutions to the problems that they have.''
       And, in fact, the frustration of not getting any answers 
     herself as a new resident of Round Lake Park ultimately drove 
     Beyer to seek office. She served as a trustee from 1989 to 
     1991 and was elected mayor in 1993, taking office in April, 
     she said.
       ``I just wanted to be listened to,'' Beyer said. ``So I 
     guess you can say that I was frustrated and decided that my 
     frustration would be turned into determination. When I look 
     at something and get frustrated, I don't turn around and walk 
     away.''
       That determination to make a difference had been passed on 
     to Beyer not only by her family, which also has roots in 
     politics, but also by her first boss.
       At age 15, Beyer worked as a carhop at Dog 'n Suds in 
     Wauconda, where she grew up. The owner of the drive-up 
     restaurant was--not surprisingly--the then-mayor of Wauconda, 
     Ken Potter.
       ``He, along with others, had at an early age been 
     instilling in me ideas and the concepts of government,'' 
     Beyer said. ``So I worked on my first campaign when I was 15 
     years old to elect him to be mayor.''
       [[Page E393]] Beyer married her Wauconda High School 
     sweetheart, Skip Beyer, a carpenter, when she was 18, and 
     they have five children. The decision to teach her children 
     at home is one Beyer is glad she made. Considering the amount 
     of time spent working as mayor and a waitress, Beyer said she 
     feels lucky to be able to spend the entire day with her kids.
       ``[Home schooling] is a lot of work, but I see a lot of 
     benefit out of it, too,'' she said. ``There's not a right way 
     or a wrong way [to educate your kids]. With my schedule, it 
     has served in a real positive way because I have been able to 
     stay home with my kids.''
       Skip said his wife's long hours can be difficult, but 
     ``it's what she wants to do and what she likes to do best,'' 
     he said. ``She's just very tenacious on what she does.''
       With a mayoral salary of about $6,000 a year, Beyer 
     certainly is not in it for the money, she said. She admitted, 
     however, that her title has come in handy.
       As a mayor, her calls get answered.
       ``When I was just Charlene Beyer, without a title, I had 
     the same ideas, the same thoughts, the same opinions. They 
     haven't changed,'' she said. ``But then when they put a title 
     behind my name, my calls get answered. People have respect 
     for me.''
       Beyer said some politicians' abuse of their titles and 
     power has caused people to be intimidated by them, but that's 
     not the image she is trying to project.
       ``I would rather people know me for me and my actions, 
     other than me saying who I am,'' she said.
       Her actions, starting with her first two months in office, 
     speak for themselves. Only a week after Beyer began her 
     mayoral duties, her mother died unexpectedly. The following 
     week, a resident committed suicide, and about a month and a 
     half later, the town flooded.
       ``It was a very emotional thing for me, because my wounds 
     were very fresh,'' she said. ``And yet, there's a part of me 
     that greets every negative, every negative situation, knowing 
     that somewhere in there is a positive.''
       Crediting basic common sense, Beyer met her new challenges 
     head-on. She arranged to have meals sent to the family of the 
     suicide victim, and when the flooding crisis hit, Beyer met 
     it with planning and organization.
       She and her staff of volunteers monitored all calls coming 
     into the village hall and called all of the senior citizen 
     residents to check if they needed assistance and to help 
     prepare them for the next storm.
       ``We were not crushed by this wave,'' she said. ``We 
     greeted it with a lot of planning. It was a very frustrating 
     time, but we never had one resident, through both of the 
     floods, come here and be upset at the board for what they 
     weren't doing.
       ``It was a basic common-sense thing. People want to be 
     informed, they want to be communicated to, and they want to 
     be educated. And when you've done those three things, 
     sometimes there are no solutions. Sometimes there is no quick 
     fix, but when you've done that, they feel comfortable that 
     you're doing the best that you can do.''
       Joyce Weissmueller, a village trustee, thinks Beyer has 
     performed well as mayor. ``She delegates, but she personally 
     is out there doing things,'' Weissmueller said. ``The 
     personal touch is Charlene.''
       Weissmueller said Beyer's strength is getting people to 
     work together. Her dedication to the village is apparent by 
     the new committees she has established, including an economic 
     development committee to revitalize the downtown area, as 
     well as a beautification committee to clean it up, 
     Weissmueller said.
       Beyer said that techniques she uses in dealing with people 
     as mayor also work at her weekend job. Most customers 
     understand. ``That's the part of being a waitress that is 
     very difficult,'' she said. ``It's no different than being a 
     mom. And it's no different than being a mayor, because 
     there's lots of people that don't understand what I'm doing 
     and what the board's decisions are because they're not 
     involved and they falsely accuse.
       ``You have to be so convinced of your position and your 
     standards and your decisions that that doesn't bother you.''
       Beyer said the pressure at her waitressing job sometimes 
     increases when she is serving her political peers.
       She recalled a situation in which an elderly man accused 
     her of stealing the credit card he had used to pay his tab, 
     when in fact he had inadvertently placed it in his glasses 
     case.
       ``He stood up, and the whole restaurant heard,'' she said. 
     ``It was very humbling, because I was being accused 
     falsely.''
       All the while, Beyer had to maintain her composure.
       ``It's a very humbling thing to be in that kind of 
     environment,'' Beyer said. ``It's not that there's anything 
     wrong with being a waitress, but it's not normal that a mayor 
     of a village is waitressing in a restaurant.''
       But she is quick to defend the profession that is plagued 
     by a misconception that those who work in it are not 
     intelligent.
       ``Waitresses, I think, are very gifted people,'' Beyer 
     said. ``They're almost like housewives to me because they're 
     able to do many things at one time.
       ``They're very educated people,'' she said of her 
     coworkers, who include several teachers. ``Most people I work 
     with have college degrees. I don't. But we're all equal.''
       Beyer said she has no plans to get her college degree 
     because she does not have the time or the money.
       ``If I had the money for a college education, it's going to 
     be going to my children, not myself,'' she said.
       Beyer sees her lack of education as a plus for her job as 
     mayor.
       ``When I look at an issue, I'm not clouded by what I've 
     been taught, what is politically correct,'' she said. ``I can 
     deal with a situation probably differently than most people 
     do because I greet it differently. I greet it from the 
     people's perspective.
       ``I hope I always stay that way. I intend to.''
       

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