It has been more than two months since Gilroy Garlic Festival volume 37 filled Christmas Hill Park and less than two weeks since that magic dollar number appeared as it has each year since this exercise in community bonding and bounty sprouted in a backyard on the highway south of town, across from the Garlic Shoppe. Perhaps fittingly, that shop of garlicky gastronomic delights is owned by the grandsons of one of the growers who introduced garlic processing to our wonderfully pungent environs.
The Dispatch was there for that first gathering of the cloves, wondering with the rest in the very modest crowd whether a bulbous idea germinated by a few of the era’s good old boys could possibly grab the public’s collective heart, soul and imagination and grow with gusto from tiny seed to mighty harvest.
It was a recipe made up by those pioneers as they went along, with a dash of dream, a pinch of playfulness, a few fantasies, a wish and a prayer and hope all braided together with luck and lots of hard work by hundreds and, ultimately, tens of thousands of people we call our community, our friends and our neighbors—in short, us.
This year, the Gilroy Garlic Festival Association—a very specialized, amazingly hardworking and talented bunch of us—gave back to the community $250,000, bringing the event’s 37-year total distributed to nonprofits and charitable organizations to nearly $11 million.
And so very much more.
We should pat ourselves on the back, and offer a heartfelt Thank You to the association’s visionary pioneers, its leadership for 2015 and years past, and to every man, woman, teenager, child and group that pitched in for the collective good to make Gilroy a better, friendlier and more caring place for us all. It’s something we call our own, and rightfully so, and it’s very special. Well done to all. We should be very proud of ourownselves.
