[Congressional Record Volume 144, Number 151 (Wednesday, October 21, 1998)]
[Senate]
[Pages S12847-S12848]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                        TRIBUTE TO ALLEN GARTNER

  Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, Allen Gartner is one of Vermont's real 
citizen treasures. He was recently honored by the Rutland Region 
Chamber of Commerce on their 100th anniversary. I ask unanimous consent 
that a letter I

[[Page S12848]]

wrote and an article about this honor be printed in the Record.
  The whole Gartner family represent the best of Vermont and Marcelle 
and I value their friendship.
  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:
                                                    Patrick Leahy,


                                                 U.S. Senator,

                                                  October 1, 1998.
     Rutland Region Chamber of Commerce,
     North Main Street,
     Rutland, VT
       Dear Friends: My mother was wrong.
       She always told me that if I wanted something done right, I 
     should do it myself.
       What I learned a little later in life was that if I REALLY 
     wanted something done right, I needed to ask Allen Gartner to 
     do it.
       Allen personifies Rutland--his love of his family, his 
     sense of the broader community, his deep spirituality, and 
     his sense of the broader community of which we are all a 
     part. Most important for his friends in Rutland and all over 
     Vermont is an indomitable sense that if you work hard enough, 
     and if your cause is just, anything is possible.
       It is fitting that Allen is honored by a group as respected 
     as the Rutland Region Chamber of Commerce. But Allen, by the 
     life he leads, the work he does and the joy he brings to 
     others, honors all of us every single day.
           Sincerely,
     Pat.
                                  ____


            [From the Rutland Daily Herald, October 5, 1998]

         Allen Gartner, Business Leader With a Sense of Charity

                       (By Laurie Lynn Strasser)

       ``Tzedaka'' is the most important word in the Hebrew 
     language, Mintzer Brothers co-owner Allen S. Gartner said 
     last Thursday after receiving the 1998 Business Person of the 
     Year award from the Rutland Region Chamber of Commerce.
       It means ``charity.''
       ``I was raised that this is the greatest country in the 
     world, by a long shot,'' said Gartner. ``It was our 
     obligation to give back to the community. My parents not only 
     spoke those words, but they lived by those words.''
       In conferring the honor, Rutland Chamber of Commerce 
     Executive Vice President Tom Donahue rattled off a litany of 
     boards that Gartner has served on. Donahue added that if he 
     listed all the extracurriculars and charities Gartner had 
     helped, ``this luncheon might turn into a dinner meeting.''
       In an interview afterward, Gartner said he felt honored by 
     the award, but that recognition was not the point.
       ``Whatever I'm doing, I need to do because that's what 
     people should do,'' he said. ``The bottom line of business is 
     not what's important. That's not what we're on this planet 
     for. We're only here a speck anyway. Really, it's just a 
     blip. What's important is the welfare of the community.'' His 
     father, the late Walter Gartner, used to say that the best 
     form of giving is anonymous. His father made it out of Nazi 
     Germany in the nick of time, but lost the rest of his family 
     to the Holocaust. After World War II, he married and bought 
     Mintzer Bros., a fuel oil and grain business that had been 
     founded in 1926.
       Walter Gartner's wife, Margot, gave birth to Edward in 1945 
     and Allen in 1949.
       The younger Gartner still recalls the days when customers 
     bought berry baskets, syrup cans and laying mash. By the 
     early 1960's, the emphasis had switched to building supplies.
       Gartner worked at the Strongs Avenue store in the summers 
     between his graduation from Rutland High School in 1967 and 
     Union College in 1971.
       He spent his junior year abroad in France. Just last year, 
     he returned to Paris for an emotional reunion with his host 
     family. The people he last saw as teenagers are now in their 
     40s, he noted.
       Gartner earned a bachelor's degree in political science and 
     modern languages.
       ``I have a passion for politics,'' he said. ``To me, 
     politics is conflict and compromise.''
       He went on to pursue an advanced degree at New York 
     University Law School, although he never intended to become a 
     practicing attorney.
       ``I spent the first 20 years of my life trying to be a 
     peace-maker,'' he said. ``The first day of law school, the 
     professor's asking, ``What would your argument be? It was 
     always anti-thetical to what I believed, but it was good 
     education. I refer to my law school education almost every 
     day of the week.''
       It wound up taking him seven years to finish at NYU because 
     his father had suffered a stroke. Living with relatives on 
     Manhattan's Upper West Side, he would attend graduate school 
     then work for one semester each year.
       ``I'd go down to the pay phone in the basement of the law 
     school library and make phone calls for the business,'' he 
     recalled. ``I'd do this every day, buying and selling lumber, 
     calling customers.''
       Gradually, he and his brother, Edward, took the reins from 
     their father. Walter Gartner died in 1983.
       The brothers opened another Mintzer branch in Ludlow in the 
     early 1980s. Three years ago they expanded again into the 
     Route 7 south space vacated by Grossman's after it went out 
     of business.
       In the coming year, Mintzer Bros. may face its toughest 
     challenge in 70 years. Home Depot, the largest hardware chain 
     in the world, has indicated an interest in opening a large 
     store in Rutland.
       ``Big orange is a dose of reality,'' he said referring to 
     Home Depot's theme color. ``You've got to fight the good 
     fight, fight it as best as you can. Business today is war. 
     I'm not sure I'm cut out for war.''
       Gartner was instrumental in recruiting area merchants to 
     form Rutland Region First, a grassroots organization whose 
     goal is to stop Home Depot from locating in the area.
       No matter what happens with the business, it is important 
     to keep perspective, said Gartner. He has faced worse 
     hardships, including the loss of his firstborn daughter when 
     she was six days old and chronic back pain for the past 17 
     years. Financial challenges are not as important as keeping 
     his family intact, Gartner said.
       Just like when he was growing up, Gartner still plays the 
     role of peaceseeker, but these days he has taken the quest to 
     an international level.
       Last week, he met Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, who was 
     in Washington, DC, to parley with Israeli Prime Minister 
     Benjamin Netanyahu.
       ``It pains me to see Palestinians mistreated,'' he said. 
     ``I'm a Zionist, but I think we've got to live together.''
       Committed to the Middle East peace process for the past 
     decade, he shaved off his beard when he learned of the 
     historic 1979 accord between Israel and Egypt. When Yasser 
     Arafat signed a treaty with the late Isaac Rabin in 1993, 
     Gartner was there on the south lawn of the White House.
       ``It was a most emotional moment for me,'' he recalled, 
     describing weeping Jewish and Arab Americans throwing their 
     arms around each other.

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