[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 160 (2014), Part 11]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page 15735]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                        TRIBUTE TO BARRY BERGEY

                                 ______
                                 

                         HON. CHRIS VAN HOLLEN

                              of maryland

                    in the house of representatives

                      Thursday, November 13, 2014

  Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to express my gratitude and 
appreciation to Barry Bergey, who retires this month as Director of 
Folk and Traditional Arts at the National Endowment for the Arts after 
a distinguished 29-year tenure.
  Mr. Bergey's predecessor at the NEA, Dan Sheehy, spoke of him as 
follows:
  ``Barry grew up in the picture postcard town of New Haven, Missouri, 
on the banks of the Missouri River, population 2,000. His father was a 
minister, and Barry once recalled how sitting through the same sermon 
two times each Sunday prepared him for the many meetings he would sit 
through during his government career. After working for a time at 
Washington University of St. Louis, he found the professional love of 
his life--Missouri's rich store of traditions and the artists who 
maintained them. He became the state's first folk arts coordinator. His 
congenial persona, his cultural knowledge, and his dedication to 
serving grassroots people and their most cherished traditions caught 
the attention of Bess Lomax Hawes, then director of the National 
Endowment for the Arts' budding Folk Arts Program. Barry was hired by 
the NEA as a senior arts specialist in 1985 and became the program's 
fourth Director in 2001, following Alan Jabbour, Hawes and Daniel 
Sheehy. With 29 years of service to his credit, he is the longest-
serving folk and traditional arts staff member.''
  Mr. Bergey absorbed the values of folk and traditional artists during 
his upbringing and worked to preserve and promote them throughout his 
career. With Julia and Jim Olen, he produced ``I'm Old but I'm Awfully 
Tough,'' a recording of field documentation made in the Ozark Region of 
Missouri and Arkansas in 1975. As State Folk Arts Coordinator at the 
Missouri Cultural Heritage Center based at the University of Missouri-
Columbia from 1983-85, he initiated a model statewide traditional arts 
apprenticeship program and a statewide touring and performance series. 
He also curated a touring exhibition on a 19th century housebarn in 
rural Franklin County near New Haven, Missouri, where he grew up. Mr. 
Bergey founded the Missouri Friends of the Folk Arts, an organization 
that sponsored the annual Frontier Folklife Festival at the Gateway 
Arch in St. Louis and produced The Missouri Tradition, a public radio 
program. He also taught courses on the blues and on American folk music 
at Washington University in St. Louis.
  In addition to managing NEA grants on folk and traditional arts, Mr. 
Bergey directed the NEA National Heritage Fellowships, the premiere 
American lifetime honors for individual accomplishments in folk and 
traditional arts. He provided guidance and support for folk arts 
infrastructure and statewide apprenticeship programs, as well as 
technical assistance in the field. Mr. Bergey urged support for many 
recommended applicants, recognizing that even a small grant could make 
a difference to folk arts projects and that an organization could 
leverage NEA support when seeking funding from other organizations and 
donors.
  Mr. Bergey's international leadership includes service as consultant 
to the Center for U.S.-China Arts Exchange on a long-term project to 
conserve traditional arts and minority culture in Yunan Province, 
China; author of a chapter on music and public policy in the United 
States and Canada in the Garland Encyclopedia of World Music; and 
service on the U.S. delegation for the UNESCO Intergovernmental 
Meetings of Experts to Draft a Convention for the Safeguarding of 
Intangible Cultural Heritage, the UNESCO Inter-American Committee on 
Culture of the Organization of American States in 2003, and the U.S. 
delegation to UNESCO to draft a Convention on the Diversity of Cultural 
Expressions in 2005.
  Joe Wilson, who served as Chairman of the National Council for the 
Traditional Arts in Silver Spring, Maryland, described Mr. Bergey's 
service as follows:
  ``During his years as a folklorist and collector, Barry sought out 
those the Good Book calls `even the least of these little Ones.' He 
understood that the genes for creativity were spread wide, and knew it 
was his duty to reach into the places where the poor and ragged people 
dwelled. He was gracious and good to all who came calling, and 
understood that it was his duty to be certain that his branch of 
government was fair to all its citizens. He honored the taxpayers by 
being careful in the expenditure of funds. In an influential place and 
at an important time, he lifted artists up, all artists, and made them 
better understood. His reach has been great, and his grasp 
magnificent.''
  I urge my colleagues to join me in thanking Barry for his 
extraordinary service to the National Endowment for the Arts and for 
his outstanding contributions to our cultural heritage, and in wishing 
him, his wife Jean, and his children Claire and Matthew all the best in 
the coming years.

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