Al Gagliardi has served his country and community as a veteran,
sheriff’s deputy and community volunteer. On Monday, he will add
the title of
”
grand marshal
”
to that list during the city’s annual Memorial Day Parade.
Al Gagliardi has served his country and community as a veteran, sheriff’s deputy and community volunteer. On Monday, he will add the title of “grand marshal” to that list during the city’s annual Memorial Day Parade.
“I really wanted to wait ’til I was 100 years old (to be grand marshal) because then I could really tell some wild stories,” Gagliardi said with a laugh. “I guess I missed it by 14 years.”
Although Gagliardi, 86, felt that many other people are deserving of the attention, he also said it was an honor to be named the parade’s grand marshal.
Local festivities will begin at 9 a.m. Monday with a remembrance ceremony at Gavilan Hills Cemetery sponsored by American Legion Post No. 217.
This year’s parade, which will start at 11 a.m. Monday in downtown Gilroy, is expected to have 120 entries, parade co-chair Albert Lambert said. Those include various businesses and community organizations as well as entries from the Gilroy police and fire departments and the Santa Clara County Sheriff’s Department.
The parade will start at Monterey and Eighth streets near the train depot and head west on 10th Street before ending at Christmas Hill Park.
A day of family fun will continue at the park starting at 1 p.m. with food, a car show, activities for children and live music. A special ceremony at the park at 3 p.m. will include the playing of Taps, a flag folding ceremony and the releasing of white doves, Lambert said. In addition, a skydiver will land in the park, he said.
Winners of an essay contest also will be honored at the park with savings bonds. Contestants wrote on the subject of “What Memorial Day Means to Me.”
Gagliardi expressed some of his own views on the subject this week, emphasizing that Memorial Day is a time to remember comrades who didn’t make it.
“It’s a day of thanking and honoring these guys that lay in our cemeteries and in our sacred ground all over this country,” Gagliardi said.
Gagliardi, a San Jose native who grew up on a prune orchard in northern Gilroy, was a part of the infantry that landed on the island Kiska to retake it from Japan in August 1943.
He was later reassigned to the 147th Infantry as a 50-caliber machine gunner. The infantry was attached to the 5th Marine Division in Iwo Jima and later went to Okinawa.
Gagliardi returned to California in 1946 and became a charter member of both American Legion Post No. 669 and Veterans of Foreign Wars Post No. 6309. He served as VFW Commander from 1946-47 and in the American Legion Post from 1954-55.
Gagliardi joined the Santa Clara County Sheriff’s Department in late 1948 and retired in 1977. He started volunteering for the Gilroy Rural Fire Department in 1947 and worked as a volunteer for the Gilroy Fire Department from 1951 to 1971. He continues to volunteer for the city’s Wipeout Watch graffiti abatement program.
He said the hard work he put in on the farm growing up helped prepare him for military service.
“When people ask me what I did, I tell them I dug a lot of latrines, and I did a good job with them,” he said with a laugh.
Monday’s events
Memorial Day
Remembrance Ceremony
Where: Gavilan Hills Cemetery, 1000 First St.
When: 9 a.m.
Memorial Day Parade
Where: Starts at Monterey and Eighth streets; ends at Christmas Hill Park, 7050 Miller Ave.
When: 11 a.m.
Family Fun Day
Where: Christmas Hill Park, 7050 Miller Ave.
When: Festivities start at 1 p.m.; special ceremony at 3 p.m.
