Charles W. Gilchrist, Class of 1958

In a career that might seem on the surface disjointed, with its mid­-course shift from politics to the church, you have, in fact, shown a persistent continuity of care for those in our country with the greatest need. You first relinquished practice in tax law with a prestigious law firm in the District of Columbia in order to serve as the elected Executive of Montgomery County Maryland. Of your service in that office the Washington Post noted your “consuming and canny interest in people and their problems,” and when you then left not, as many expected, for a nomination to Congress, but for seminary and a vocation in the church, it acknowledged that you did so “after endowing (the office) with unprecedented political powers and establishing a multimillion-dollar legacy of social services and public works projects.” Subsequently, as deacon and assistant rector of an inner-city parish in Washington, D.C., you spent much of your time working with the homeless. And now, as executive director of the Cathedral Shelter of Chicago, you oversee programs that provide social services and drug addiction treatment each year to more than 4,000 residents of Chicago’s Near West Side and head that city’s Interfaith Community Development Corporation in its efforts to provide housing for those with the very lowest incomes. In recognition of your distinguished achievement in service to the poorest members of our society, Williams College is proud to present you with its Bicentennial Medal.