Candidate: Gary Kadow

Gary Kadow currently serves as Chairman & Founder of Project SOS – Support Our Soldiers, Inc., which a non-for-profit 501(c) 3 corporation and State registered charity founded in 2010 and operating here in Central Florida. During its initial years Project SOS worked in Iraq and Afghanistan, opening 22 US military operated clinics, and the building a ten bed children’s emergency hospital in Jalalabad, Afghanistan. From 2012 to present Project SOS has provided 445 motorized wheelchairs to disabled veterans in the tri-county area, and continues to provide food, water, clothing, shelter, and emergency medical care to veterans and their families in the Ocala National Forest. In 2014 Project SOS launched the U.S. Military Children’s College Scholarship Fund and has since awarded 81 fully paid college scholarships to the children of military veterans who require financial assistant with college expenses.

Prior to his retirement in 1998, Mr. Kadow served as Executive Vice President of The Western New York Savings Bank and later on as President of the financial institution’s subsidiary corporations. After twenty years in the private sector, Mr. Kadow entered into public service as Administrator of the U S Department of Housing and Urban Development in New York State and spent the last six years of his career working in Washington, DC as a Special Assistant to the Secretary of HUD, and subsequently as Special Assistant to the President of the United States, serving as a member of the National Labor & Management Council, and the Presidents Management Excellence Team. Mr. Kadow also has served as a Director of The Rotary Club of The Villages, is a Paul Harris Fellow, and was elected Rotarian of the Year for 2010 and received the Rotary International Avenues of Service Award in 2012. In 2014 was also awarded the National Vietnam Veterans Commendation Medal for his service in assisting our nation’s veterans. He currently serves on the Board of Directors at UF The Villages Regional Hospital Foundation, Chaplain to the Vietnam Veterans of America and is the elected Chairman of the Villages Community Development 5th District.

As an ordained Episcopal Chaplain for over 40 years, he volunteered as Emergency Chaplain to the first responders at Ground Zero and is the author of “Ten Days of Hell and Heroes, an eyewitness account of September 11, 2001” published in 2002. He and his wife Barbara currently reside in the Village of Lynnhaven,The Villages, Florida.