[Congressional Record Volume 164, Number 144 (Tuesday, August 28, 2018)]
[Senate]
[Page S5989]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                         ADDITIONAL STATEMENTS

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                      REMEMBERING SALLY J. MICHEL

 Mr. CARDIN. Mr. President, today I wish to celebrate the life 
of Sally J. Michel, a lifelong activist, a staunch advocate for 
underprivileged children and Baltimore's parks, and a Baltimore icon 
and friend. Sally passed away last week, and while I join with all of 
Baltimore in mourning her passing, I also celebrate the lasting impact 
her legacy will have on generations of Marylanders to come.
  Sally grew up in Roanoke, VA, before attending Goucher College and 
settling down with her husband, Robert ``Butch'' Michel, in Baltimore, 
where she immediately began devoting her life to our city. She began by 
joining the renowned volunteer organization, the Junior League. By 
1973, Sally was the Baltimore chapter's president. She used her 
position to sponsor a national conference she called For Children's 
Sake, which brought together leaders in education, healthcare, and more 
to discuss the most pressing needs of America's children and how best 
local communities can address them. She brought those ideas home to 
Baltimore, often serving as an ambassador for children's welfare issues 
across the city.
  Her seemingly boundless energy for community service earned the 
attention and trust of then-Mayor William Donald Schaefer, who 
entrusted Sally with hosting a monthly dinner wherein Baltimore 
citizens of all professions and backgrounds were invited to come, eat, 
and exchange their ideas for how to improve the city. Sally hosted 
these dinners for more than a decade, cultivating hundreds of new, 
innovative ideas for bettering Baltimore's schools and neighborhoods 
and ensuring that those ideas were executed. Attendees often said that 
Sally's dinners made them feel more connected with their city and as 
though their experiences and insights truly mattered to the city's 
leadership. That is what Sally did best, bring people together and make 
sure they knew they were important. Her unparalleled talent for making 
Baltimore's residents feel heard, loved, and supported was a gift to us 
all.
  Later, in the 1980s, Sally turned her focus to improving Baltimore's 
public parks. She believed our outdoor spaces were the key to bringing 
and keeping communities together and provided critical safe spaces for 
children to play and develop active lifestyles. Toward that end, she 
founded two Baltimore mainstays: the local Outward Bound School and the 
now-legendary Parks and People Foundation.
  The Parks and People Foundation was Sally's labor of love. The 
foundation invests in Baltimore's parks, gardens, and afterschool 
activities and has been so wildly successful that it has become a model 
for urban park advocacy nationwide. I was proud to have worked with the 
Parks and People Foundation to establish bike trails through our city. 
One of the foundation's flagship achievements was the creation of the 
SuperKids Camp, a children's literacy program designed specifically to 
help elementary school children falling behind their reading level. 
Sally always saw the children that were being overlooked and 
underserved, and she used the SuperKids program to make sure that they 
felt seen. She inspired and supported kids who would have otherwise 
lacked the resources to catch up with their peers, and for that, a 
grateful city will always remember her. My granddaughter Julia 
volunteered at one such camp over the summer, and she spoke with pride 
of how many lives she saw positively impacted by their good work.
  In the 80 years Sally was with us, she served on the board of 
trustees for 57 different State and local organizations. Of those 57, 
she chaired 19, including the Baltimore City Planning Commission. In 
addition to the programs mentioned, she was a key figure in 
establishing the Baltimore School for the Arts, and to date, her 
SuperKids Camp program has served more than 30,000 children. The 
Outward Bound School has served more than 62,000.
  Perhaps most impressive of all, everything that Sally accomplished, 
she accomplished free of charge. Sally was never a paid advocate, but a 
volunteer, and when asked about her decades of service, she commented 
that she received ``psychic income'' and was more than satisfied with 
that. Sally's extreme generosity of spirit and selfless devotion to our 
community is one of many reasons Baltimore so acutely feels the weight 
of her passing. She was a hero to the tens of thousands of children who 
benefited from her altruism and creative problem-solving. She was 
Baltimore's guardian angel, always there to watch over, protect, and 
support the city's families whenever they needed her most.
  Sally was fueled by raw empathy and compassion. She took genuine joy 
in other people's successes. Beyond her impressive list of 
achievements, she was, above all, a kind and generous soul. It is a 
tragedy for our city that such a soul was taken from us too soon. Sally 
battled Alzheimer's for nearly 10 years, one of the cruelest, most 
difficult diseases there is. Sally met it head-on, as she did with 
every other challenge she ever faced. I am committed to honoring her 
life by fighting for more Federal funds toward curing Alzheimer's and 
devising better therapies for managing its symptoms. Sally's story 
reminds us that resources for medical research and institutions like 
the National Institutes of Health are absolutely critical and that, 
when we fail to invest in them, we fail good people like Sally.
  That kind of failure is inexcusable because Sally never failed us. 
She rose above and beyond in all that she did. Her commitment to 
activism and community service was unmatched and led directly to some 
of Baltimore's most successful and lasting programs. For that reason 
and so many others, Sally's absence will be sorely felt; yet her 
presence, through the families she touched and through the fingerprints 
she left all across our city, is felt all the more and will be for 
decades to come.

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