[Congressional Record Volume 164, Number 148 (Thursday, September 6, 2018)]
[Senate]
[Page S6054]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                     TRIBUTE TO THE FOGARTY FAMILY

 Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, the swearing in of the Rhode 
Island Legislature early next year will close a remarkable story of a 
great Rhode Island family. State Senator Paul Fogarty is retiring after 
20 years in office. The Fogarty family of northern Rhode Island will 
have represented nearly 80 years of public service.
  Paul was elected in 1998 to fill the State senate seat that was 
previously held by his brother, Charles Fogarty, Jr. A master plumber 
by trade, Paul rose to become the chairman of the senate labor 
committee. Like his brother Charlie, Paul had served on the Glocester, 
RI, town council before serving in the legislature.
  Charlie Fogarty got his start in State government working as an aide 
to Governor Joe Garrahy in the late 1970s. While a State senator, he 
served as both majority whip and senate president pro tempore. He was 
elected Lieutenant Governor twice, in 1998 and in 2002. He is 
remembered for starting a Christmastime tradition, Operation Holiday 
Cheer, which delivers care packages of Rhode Island mementos to 
servicemembers deployed overseas.
  In 2006, Charlie won the Democratic nomination for Governor, narrowly 
losing to the incumbent. He returned to government a few years later to 
run the State department of labor and training, where he cracked down 
on unemployment fraud. In 2015, Governor Gina Raimondo appointed 
Charlie director of the Rhode Island Department of Elderly Affairs. 
Under his leadership, the State expanded support for Meals on Wheels, 
and he played an important role in the State's successful repeal of the 
tax that seniors paid on their Social Security benefits.
  Charlie retired earlier this year, after four decades of service to 
the people of Rhode Island.
  Paul and Charlie's cousins shared the public service gene. Ray 
Fogarty was a State representative from Glocester for 10 years. He 
would go on to find and lead the Rhode Island Export Assistance Center 
at Bryant University's John H. Chafee Center for International 
Business.
  Ray's brother Edward Fogarty was an accomplished lawyer, with whom I 
worked in the State house. He worked as an arbitrator in the Rhode 
Island Superior Court and clerked in the U.S. District Court for the 
District of Rhode Island. However, Ed will best be remembered for his 
work serving as legal counsel to the speaker of the Rhode Island House 
of Representatives, to the senate majority leader, and later to the 
senate president. Ed retired in 2013 and sadly passed away in 2017.
  Charlie Fogarty credited his parents with teaching him that ``public 
service was a public trust.'' Indeed, he and brother Paul followed in 
their father's footsteps. Charles Fogarty, Sr., had been a State 
senator from Glocester before them and served for a time as director of 
the Rhode Island Small Business Administration.
  Paul and Charlie's uncle was Congressman John Fogarty, who 
represented Rhode Island in the U.S. House of Representatives for more 
than a quarter century. John was a bricklayer and president of Rhode 
Island's International Bricklayers Union local No. 1 before being 
elected to Congress at age 27. From his post on the Appropriations 
Subcommittee for Labor and Health, Education, and Welfare, Mr. Public 
Health, as he became known, championed the expansion of health research 
in the United States. During his tenure, the National Institutes of 
Health grew from a small agency with only three named institutes--for 
cancer, heart, and dental research--to a larger and more sophisticated 
operation with institutes devoted to research on mental health, allergy 
and infectious disease, neurological disease, arthritis and metabolic 
disease, child health and development, and general medical sciences. As 
subcommittee chairman during the passage of the Social Security 
amendments of 1965, John Fogarty was one of the key supporters of the 
legislation that created the Medicare and Medicaid Programs.
  John served until his death in 1967. Dr. Howard Rusk wrote in the New 
York Times, ``No one in the history of this country has done more to 
promote more and better health services, more and better health 
facilities, and more and better health research than Representative 
Fogarty.'' In Rhode Island, no fewer than five health and educational 
facilities have been dedicated in John Fogarty's name.
  The deep commitment of the Fogarty family to the public welfare, 
instilled across generations, has been borne out in countless ways. 
Paul's son Brendan Fogarty even worked as a State senate page during 
high school and college. For now, there will be no Fogartys in State 
government. Our State and our Nation are all the richer for their 
passion and dedication to public life. Rhode Islanders are grateful for 
the lasting legacy of the Fogartys of Glocester.

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