ICYMI: Hill staffer who spent six decades in Congress dies

Bertie Bowman was born to a sharecropper and started work as a janitor. He became a Washington institution

Source: ABC News

Hill staffers usually get little ink. But anyone who has spent anytime near Congress knows they are its unsung heroes. They make the place run, and good staff make members better legislators.

So, kudos to Michael Rosenwald of the Washington Post for telling the world about Bertie Bowman, a veritable institution on the Hill and a guy who lived the American Dream.

Bertie Bowman, the son of South Carolina sharecroppers who arrived at the U.S. Capitol in 1944 as a 13-year-old runaway, got a $2-a-week job sweeping the building’s steps, and then became the longest-serving African American congressional aide in history, died Oct. 25 at a rehabilitation facility in North Bethesda, Md. He was 92. [….]

During an extraordinary, unsung life in Washington, Mr. Bowman was Bill Clinton’s mentor when the future president was a congressional clerk. He was friends with Sens. Strom Thurmond and Jesse Helms, who opposed civil rights measures. And he worked until he was 90, coordinating sensitive hearings for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

Amazing. Rosenwald’s article is very worth your time, as is this audio interview of Mr. Bowman by Steve Inskeep.

Mr. Bowman wrote a memoir, which you can buy here.