Bertie Bowman Obituary – Cause of Death: In loving memory of Bertie Bowman, longest-serving African-American congressional staffer.

Herbert “Bertie” Bowman, an American congressional staffer who served as the hearing coordinator of the U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations from 2000 to 2021 died on October 25, 2023, of complications from heart surgery in a rehabilitation facility in North Bethesda, Maryland. He was 92.

Bowman began working at the U.S. Capitol in 1944 at the age of 13.

Bowman was born April 12, 1931, in Summerton, South Carolina, to sharecroppers Mary Ragin and Robert Bowman. His mother died and his father soon remarried. Bowman was raised with twelve siblings in a house with no plumbing. After a chance meeting with U.S. senator Burnet R. Maybank who was campaigning for reelection, he moved to Washington, D.C., in 1944 at the age of 13. He graduated from Roosevelt High School.

Bowman was married and later divorced. His second wife, Elaine King, died in 2009. He had a stepdaughter and four children.

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