Megan Charlop, a longtime Norwood resident and mother of four whose life’s work was improving the health and well-being of Bronxites young and old, died on March 17 as she biked to PS 55 along Crotona Avenue. She swerved to avoid an opening car door when a city bus struck her, killing her instantly. Charlop was 57.

For the last 26 years, Charlop worked for Montefiore Medical Center where she was instrumental in creating a Safe House for Lead Poisoning Prevention and for the last seven years as director of the Division of Community Health at Montefiore’s School Health Program, which has medical clinics in 16 Bronx schools. In 1999, Charlop was one of 10 to receive the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Community Health and Leadership Program award for her lead poisoning prevention work at Montefiore. She helped found the south Bronx environmental group Greening for Breathing with the award money.

Philip Ozuah, MD, head of the Children’s Hospital at Montefiore, called her a “champion for the health and social well-being of the families of the Bronx,” and that her “work for Montefiore and the people of the Bronx literally touched thousands of her co-workers and residents of the borough."  

Came to Bronx in 1970s

But Charlop’s work in the Bronx goes back to the mid-1970s, a time when the borough’s infrastructure was disintegrating from arson and neglect.  She helped to found People’s Development Corporation, a grassroots revitalization group. She later did housing work with Fordham Bedford Housing Corporation before joining Montefiore.  She also helped found the New York City Coalition to End Lead Poisoning.

Charlop was born in Brooklyn and raised in Great Neck, Long Island along with her two brothers, David and Gordon.

News of Charlop’s death rippled briskly through the Bronx on Wednesday as people received calls and e-mails from friends and co-workers. The following day, about 200 of her colleagues from Montefiore and all over the Bronx gathered at her office and made their way with flower seed packets to Williamsbridge Oval Park. Standing in a circle, her co-workers and collaborators took turns paying tribute and testifying to Charlop’s impact on them and the community. There didn’t seem to be any clear line between friend and co-worker. Each seemed to be both.

One woman said Charlop, an avid bicyclist, “taught my 6-year-old how to ride a bike.”

Paul Meissner, a Montefiore colleague, said he wanted to be like Megan. She was a role model as a parent, a health advocate and a human being. “Megan was my hero,” he said, a sentiment echoed by several other speakers.

Many marveled how she was able to balance family, work, friends, a spiritual life and a whole lot of fun.

“Life was not either/or for her,” said S. Kenneth Schonberg, MD, a professor of pediatrics and a consultant to the School Health Program. “She was completely an and person.”
The task now, Meissner said, was to “work hard to fill those shoes and keep doing what she’s been doing all these years.”

An ‘Indomitable Spirit’

David Appel, MD, director of the School Health Program, said Charlop was an “indomitable spirit” who “would come in with her smile and made everyone believe in the optimism of mankind.”

The following morning, at the funeral service in Great Neck, hundreds of people from all facets of Charlop’s life filled every available space in the chapel, the hallway, and even the sidewalk outside, where the service was broadcast on speakers that many found difficult to hear.  Everyone stayed until the very end anyway.

Rabbi Dov Katz of Conservative Synagogue Adath Israel of Riverdale, where Charlop would walk three miles to for Saturday morning services, presided. Charlop was preparing for her adult bat mitzvah in June.

Charlop’s husband, Richie Powers, her four adult children (Sarah, Zach, Rachel and Aaron Charlop-Powers) and her two brothers each paid tribute to Charlop, moving mourners alternately to tears and laughter.  Charlop is also survived by her father, Bernard.

Her youngest, Aaron, recalled how terrified he was to go to school without his mom when he was little and he would clutch onto her leg. To build his confidence, Charlop — who, with her Norwood friends, founded a cooperative nursery school in the neighborhood  — made him a special super-hero cape.

Working for Kids’ Health

That loving creativity manifested itself at work as well. Appel called Charlop a “true genius in community health and advocacy.” 

She understood, he said, before it was popular that, to combat childhood obesity, adults had to take responsibility for the foods kids ate and that the place to start was with the sweetened milk served at schools. She began with two schools and taught the students to “try it and like it by doing blind taste tests.” She organized a local nutrition coalition that expanded the program to the district, region and, along with a citywide coalition, to the city as a whole. “Over one million New York City children are affected by Megan’s work …,” Appel said, adding that it was “one example of hundreds showing how Megan Charlop moved us forward in our work.”

She had an uncanny capacity to look at people and see their humanity,” said her oldest daughter, Sarah, in her eulogy. “More than anyone I’ve known, she knew how to connect with the most important part of other people — the part that cares.” Her own caring was legendary. She opened her home to foster children and to Caribbean and African families brought to the Children’s Hospital at Montefiore for special surgeries not available in their own countries.

Her oldest son, Zachary, said that his mother “wanted to give something to everyone who had something lacking” and that she believed that “with enough love you can transform any situation, and the rest is commentary.”

In describing his wife, Richie Powers used an expression from Charlop’s grandmother: “Sweetness was baked into her bones.”

Speaking to perhaps everyone who wondered how they would keep on moving forward with their life and work without Charlop there to collaborate with and gleefully egg them on, her younger daughter, Rachel, told them:

“While we didn’t get everything we wanted from my mom, she gave us everything we need, and the rest is up to us.”

-Alex Kratz contributed to this article.

Ed. Note: Memories and photos of Megan Charlop can be sent to remembermegcharlop@gmail.com, an e-mail address set up by the family. Readers can also continue to share memories on posts about Charlop at www.bronxnewsnetwork.org (just search for Megan Charlop) in the comments section. We will make sure the family receives all comments.  The family also asks that in lieu of condolence packages, donations be made to any charity, or those that Charlop was involved in: Transportation Alternatives (www.transalt.org); Partners in Health (www.pih.org) or the Eugenia Ford Powers Memorial Fund/Family Scholar House (www.familyscholarhouse.org).