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Community Corner

Music Room Dedicated in Memory of Former Patient

Essex County Hospital assigns room to remember music aficionado Charles Palo.


Last year, Regina Palo donated money for the purchase of bongos and pianos to the Essex County Hospital Center in Cedar Grove, bringing the gift of music to the patients.

This year, the West Orange resident had tears in her eyes after she spoke in a room dedicated to her late son, Charles Thursday and earned a standing ovation.

Charles was a former patient at the old Essex County Hospital. He died suddenly in 2010 at the age of 53.

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“He always loved music,” Palo said. “He wanted to be a composer and then he got sick.”

Essex County Executive Joseph N. DiVincenzo Jr. dedicated the Charles R. Palo Music Room after Regina Palo donated $1,820 after collecting donations from the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill (NAMI).

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Charles Palo attended the Manhattan School of Music, as well as the Montclair State Academy of Music Program. He also received private instruction from the Juilliard School.

In addition to naming the room after Charles Palo, a plaque was hung outside the Music Therapy Room, right next to the Regina Palo Library. The plaque explains Charles love for music.

The inscription on the plaque reads: “Charles, an accomplished musician and former patient of our facility, found peace and comfort in rhythm and melody. Music was his true passion, and it is our hope that other residents find the same joy and tranquility in this room as he did.”

Regina Palo has been involved as an advocate to help patients at the Essex County Hospital Center for decades.

“I would come up here and cry every summer when there was no A/C for the patients,” Palo said. “I want these people to be treated like other people in other hospitals.”

Palo's advocacy work for mentally ill patients began in the early 1980s, when she joined the Essex Chapter of NAMI.

“Therapists didn’t want to see us [family] and sometimes thought we were part of the problem,” Palo said. She explained she and others with mentally ill family members had nowhere to turn. “But NAMI was a family group to help family get through the process.”

With the alliance, which included a stint as vice president and president, Palo was a constant thorn in the side of county officials as she lobbied for years for improved conditions at the nearly century-old Essex County Hospital, where her son was a patient.

“I admired how passionate she was,” DiVincenzo said. “And not just because her son.”

After a stint as freeholder president prior to being elected county executive, DiVincenzo appointed Palo as a member of the ad hoc Hospital Oversight Committee. As county executive, DiVincenzo announced a new hospital would be built, something Palo was lobbying for.

This $58.3 million project was completed and patients moved in in February 2007.

Sheriff Armando Fontoura laughed when he reflected on Palo’s role in the new hospital center, saying, "Virginia [Palo] had just as much to do to build the plan as Joe [DiVincenzo] did.”

When the hospital was built, Regina Palo was recognized for her efforts as DiVincenzo named the hospital library after her.

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