A wonderful woman who helped new refugees all her life has received a prestigious award for her work. DP
By Deepak Adhikari, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
post-gazette.com: For the 19 years Charlotte Fox Zabusky oversaw refugee resettlement and legal immigration services at the Jewish Family & Children's Service of Pittsburgh, one chore never got old: picking up refugees at Pittsburgh International Airport.
"Imagine these people have come from an entirely different country and you're the first person to help them," the 76-year-old Squirrel Hill resident said. "It changes your life." And, of course, it changes theirs, too.
A daughter of Russian immigrants, Ms. Zabusky had the chance to help change a lot of lives over the years. For her work, she recently received the inaugural Excellence in Service award from the Pennsylvania Refugee Resettlement Program and the Bureau of Employment and Training, recognizing superior services by a refugee service provider.
"I was stunned and embarrassed," she said of learning about the award, presented to her in June. But her successor, JFCS refugee services director Leslie B. Aizenman, said it's only right that the first award went to Ms. Zabusky. "It's hard to imagine that anyone in the refugee resettlement business surpasses her in skills, insights, talent, commitment and experience.''
Ms. Zabusky grew up in Boston and attended Radcliffe College in Cambridge, Mass., where she earned an undergraduate degree in English. She later received a master's in multilingual education from Fairleigh Dickinson College in New Jersey.
She always wanted to work with people from other countries -- she hates it when people call them "foreigners'' -- and realized her dream in 1970 when she started working with immigrants as director of the New American Program at Neighborhood House in Morristown, N.J.
For five years, she helped immigrants find jobs and apply for green cards necessary to establish a permanent residence. "Initially, I didn't understand them, but their hard work and love for the family inspired me," she said.
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