The Bronx lost a giant last week. Megan Charlop’s shocking, sudden death took from us a mensch without rival.

Meeting Megan Charlop was knowing her. The warmth, the smile, the kibitzing, the energy, the offers of help  — all that came as quick as the first handshake. I remember so clearly the first time I met her when, in 1994, she walked into the Mosholu Preservation Corporation office on East 208th Street, probably to talk to Dart Westphal about progress on the renovation of a building that would become the Lead Safe House. If I never spent time with her again, I would remember her always. Her joyous presence was instantly felt.

Going through the Norwood News archives, it was remarkable that we could only put our hands on a few photos of Charlop. This despite the fact that she helped realize the Lead Safe House on Mosholu Parkway and that, more recently, she played a critical role in making sure kids didn’t get hooked on sweetened milk in school cafeterias. She and her husband, Richie Powers, took in foster kids and hosted overseas families in town for surgery at the Children’s Hospital at Montefiore. She helped to start so many organizations we probably missed some in our cover article.

But it makes sense, too. Megan was a powerhouse of an advocate without the ego. She was all about the work, not the recognition, as so many others have said this past week. Assemblyman Jeffrey Dinowitz, who just last week was lobbied in Albany by Megan and students from DeWitt Clinton High School to restore state aid to school-based health centers, said he had to nudge her into the group picture with him and his colleagues.

My wife and I were blessed to know her, something so very many people can genuinely say. Megan and I sometimes joked that we were part of an exclusive club of Jews that emigrated from Long Island to the Bronx. She and Richie would sometimes come over for the second night of Passover occasionally with pots of whole wheat matzoh ball soup and other delectable first-night leftovers in tow.  She was the life of the seder.

In addition to Richie, Megan leaves behind four magnificent children, who themselves are doing so much good in the world. Our thoughts and prayers are with all of them. 

We’ll never stop missing Megan. But she wouldn’t be happy with us if that’s all we did.

Megan was all about family, hard work, love and justice. If each of us were to put a little more effort toward each of these things, we might begin to patch the hole in the fabric of community she spent her life stitching together.
She left a bit of her life force with all who knew her. We must use it as she would have.