Alfred Richard Angelino

ALFRED R. ANGELINO

1917--2021

Per Fred’s instructions, he was interred at a private family service at the San Joaquin Valley

National Cemetery on October 6, 2021.

His friends and loved ones are invited to a Celebration of Life Luncheon at the Gilroy City Hall

Restaurant on Saturday, October 30, 2021. For time and details please contact Richard

Angelino at 408-842-6338.

ALFRED RICHARD ANGELINO

August 6, 1917 --- September 17, 2021

Age: 104

A LIFE WELL LIVED

Alfred (Fred) was born in Oakland, California to Angelina Cassina Fiora Angelino and Francisco

Emilio Angelino. Both were immigrants from the same little town in Northern Italy-- Ottiglio,

Monferrato.

Fred’s two half siblings, Amelia, and George, had been born in Angelina’s first marriage to a Mr.

Fiora who had passed away. Subsequent to his passing, Angelina married Fred’s father, Emilio

and to that union were born Fred’s full siblings, in order of birth; Louis, Inez, Henry, Natalie, and

Albert. Fred was the second youngest. At that time the family resided in Elmhurst, a suburb of

Oakland.

While living in Elmhurst Fred’s father worked at a foundry called E M Best a tractor

manufacturer, and later, in partnership with an older man who had a cement mixer which they

used to build and repair concrete sidewalks for the city of Oakland. (Our family still has the old

cement mixer.)

Tragically, Angelina, Fred’s mother, suddenly passed away late in the 1918 influenza pandemic.

Inez, Fred’s older sister, remembered that her mother “was fine in the morning but dead by the

evening”. At the time, the children were too young to take care of themselves while Emilio

worked, so he placed them in a nearby orphanage called “The Ladies Relief Society”.

As the children got older they were removed from the orphanage one by one. That was, except

for Louis, who kept running home from the orphanage. The orphanage finally said they wouldn’t

take him back. The two half siblings, Amelia, and George, went to live with their maternal

grandparents who owned a grocery store in Oakland. Fred and Albert, the youngest, were

about 10 and 8 years old when, finally, it was their turn to return home for good.

Eventually, the family moved to an old house with an 80-acre vineyard outside the small

community of Madrone. The house had no electricity, and the only source of heat was a rusty

wood burning cook stove. Fred and his brothers and sisters attended Burnett School which was

a rural two room school with two teachers, and four grades in each room. Sometimes, Fred and

his brothers had to miss school to work and help the family. At the Madrone home they raised

wine grapes and various vegetables to sell and to eat. They also had a milk cow. Fred had

good memories of breakfasts of cereal with heavy cream instead of milk. To earn money they

did contract pruning of orchards and vineyards as well as brush clearing.

One night in November of 1929 a fire started under the old cookstove in their kitchen. The

bottom of the stove had rusted out, crumbled to the wood floor and began to burn the house

down. Older brother Henry awoke to the smell of smoke and ran barefoot through the house

helping get everyone to safety. His feet were so badly burned he spent several months in the

hospital until his skin grafts healed. The family lost everything that night except the night clothes

they were wearing and their old Chevy truck. They had to split up that night to stay with various

neighbors who also gave them clothes and shoes to wear. All this happened as the Depression

got a stranglehold on the country.

At some point after the fire they found a house and orchard to lease. This farm was leased

from the Masoni family. Mrs. Masoni had lost her husband and was moving the family off the

farm. Raising a family and running a farm must have been more than she could cope with. Her

son, Richard Masoni (now in his ‘90’s), recalls that when he was five years old, he met Fred,

who was around twelve, while Fred’s father Emilio and Mrs. Masoni were negotiating the lease

terms in the yard.

In the early 1930’s the Angelino family worked at the Miller and Lux property (formerly the Glen

Ranch) where the big red barn stands today in Christmas Hill Park. Under contract, they pruned

apricots and prunes and tended the vineyards for 17 to 20 cents an hour. The foreman, at that

time and for a couple of years after, was Alfred (Alfie) Linden. As an aside, Fred’s father, Emilio,

didn’t like Alfie because he was always trying to get Emilio to take less money for their work. In

an interesting twist, after WWII Fred married Alfie’s niece Bessie Gordon! Fred’s job was to

prune his own row of grapevines while Emilio and Louis pruned their rows. Additionally, he had

to pull up all the old grape stakes, pile them up between the rows and burn them. Fred recalled

that it was freezing cold and he was happy to keep the fires going so they could warm their

hands.

After a couple of years at Burnett School Fred attended Rucker School and then Gilroy High.

After attending Gilroy High for a year and a half he was taken out of school for good to help earn

the family’s living. Then World War II began. In response to the December 7th attack on Pearl

Harbor he and several friends drove to San Jose to enlist in the Army. The Army recruiter sent

them home saying come back in a few months because the army had no barracks to put them

in! Not long after that he enlisted in the Army Air Corps. After enlisting he was sent immediately

to Hawaii with no basic training and, in fact, it was something he never received his entire time

in the army. His civilian experiences qualified him as a truck driver. From Hawaii he was sent to

the island of Espiritu Santo. His time there was in support of the Guadalcanal campaign.

Despite being in a support position, supposedly well away from the action on Guadalcanal, he

recalled being bombed regularly by the Japanese. Later he returned to the United States where

he received additional training in aviation mechanics and was then sent to the European

Theater. There, he was stationed in Italy at an air base in San Severio located north of Rome.

He served as an airplane crew chief responsible for keeping his planes flying. His time in

service was from 1942 to 1945. At the time of his death Fred was the oldest living World War II

veteran in Gilroy.

(Fred’s Army experiences read like a novel. Judy, his daughter, has recorded them for posterity

and some day she hopes to transcribe them so others might enjoy his recollections,)

In 1945 he returned from the war and married his sweetheart, Bessie Gordon. Bessie was the

daughter of prune rancher and Packard-Willys auto dealer Michael Gordon and his wife Anna

Margaret Linden Gordon. Bessie and Fred purchased 40 acres, including 20 acres of prunes,

on Dunlap Ave. from Bessie’s father. It was here that he built their home and outbuildings and

grew prunes. Fred lived in this home until his death this year at the age of 104. Bessie

predeceased him at age 89 in 2009.

Fred was born with a mechanical aptitude, a quick mind and little money so he taught himself to

repair or build anything. Even as a boy he fixed other kids’ bicycles, trading the work for parts

he could use to build himself a bike. He was constantly fixing, improving, or designing and

building farm equipment for himself and his neighbors. Since few of his neighboring farmers

could afford new equipment he repaired their old equipment. If replacement parts couldn’t be

found for the repairs he would fabricate the needed parts on one of his three lathes. Everything

he repaired or built was always made to last..

Forklifts were a specialty. Over the years, he probably built 30 of them. He built them for many

of the farmers in the region for use in their farms and orchards. Prunes, at that time, were the

most valuable agricultural commodity in the Santa Clara Valley. He also built prune shaking

machines and improved the design of a prune picking machine that had been developed by

Jura Farms of the San Joaquin Valley. To augment his income he did discing for many ranchers

who had no tractor of their own or were too elderly to do the work.

Over the years he owned or leased and farmed up to 200 acres of orchards. He built a

dehydrator for drying fruit, not only for himself and his father in law Mike Gordon, but for other

farmers as well. Those who didn’t have a dehydrator could bring their prunes to be dried in the

New Avenue dehydrator.

He had all sorts of parts and pieces of discs, tractors, trucks, and sundry pieces of iron with

which to repair, fabricate, design and improve equipment, tools and just stuff. Often someone,

even a stranger who had been referred, would arrive at the yard to ask if Fred might have a

widget for a 1930 Ford truck or the like. He nearly always had the asked-for part or knew

someone who did, and barring that….”let’s see if we can make this work”.

And, he gave free advice. The yard was always filled with men leaning on their pickup trucks

discussing the way to do something or how to solve a problem whether it was equipment, water

supply, drainage, efficient operations or crop selection. It was Fred who usually had the answer.

He gave work to as many people as he could, be they ranch hands or prune pickers. Some of

these pickers came to our ranch each and every year for many years and some of them and

their families had worked for Bessie’s father Mike Gordon in his orchards. At the end of harvest

Fred and Bessie would throw a big party for all. The ladies would make their special tamales

and mom would make pies for dessert. Afterwards the prune picker families would all leave for

their homes, mostly in the San Joaquin Valley. Ah, the memories!

Through the 60’s, 70’s and 80’s Fred became very active (in his spare time) in public service.

The activities had mostly to do with soil and water conservation. In addition he was involved

with county planning and open space issues. In the years between 1963 and 1987, when

Bessie was still keeping track, he served on more than forty boards, committees, task forces

and commissions. He was awarded many distinguished service awards. He wrote many letters

to the Dispatch for which he received recognition and compliments from his constituents. A list

of the boards, commissions and his other public activities can be found at the end of this

narrative.

We can’t close without mentioning the youth in the neighborhood whom he mentored. He

taught welding, metal fabrication, farming techniques, equipment repair, lathe operation and

much more. All this while helping them get through the difficult experience of growing up. To

this day, they still speak about how important it was to have Fred help them navigate the rough

waters of adolescence.

And we haven’t mentioned his generosity. Since he was always doing things and repairing

things for other farmers and neighbors he always had a standing invitation from them to pick all

he wanted of whatever they raised during or after the harvest. In most cases this produce

would have gone to waste after the crop was harvested if he hadn’t picked the remaining fruit

and vegetables that were left in the fields. The fruits of his labor became others’ gain He

distributed these fruits and vegetables to all the neighbors, seniors, other farmers and relatives.

This allowed everyone to can apricots, cherries, and make applesauce. Some of the fruits he

shared were dried apricots, peaches, pears and prunes. Also, there were corn, tomatoes,

zucchini, persimmons, walnuts, melons and jalapenos. Often he’d call a neighbor to tell them

something was ready to pick and they would go with him for the enjoyment of harvesting the

produce. This is the way it was year after year. Maybe all that good food was why he lived to

be 104!

He was a man you could count on-- very straightforward and genuine. If something was wrong

he wouldn’t hesitate to speak up. He was always working. When he was watching TV he was

never idle. He’d be drawing a little thumbnail sketch of his next project on a little piece of paper.

He and mom were good solid parents, always setting a good example, teaching us good

judgment, the importance of hard work and selflessness.

We are very proud of him. He is the end of an era.

Fred leaves behind a son Richard (wife Debbie); a daughter Judy Angelino Dean (husband

Bob); nieces Geraldine Meacham; Debbie Togliati and Debbie Place (husband Bill).and

nephews Frank Angelino (wife Betty); Phil Terry (wife Sheryl); and Ron Terry (wife Georgia);

THE FOLLOWING IS A LIST OF SOME PUBLIC SERVICE GROUPS FRED PARTICIPATED

IN AND AWARDS EARNED

These activities are from the years 1963 to 1987*

Director and past chairman of the Loma Prieta Resource Conservation District 1968-69

Past chairman of the Area V California Association of Conservation Resource Districts

Director and past President of the South Santa Clara Water Conservation District

Member and past director of the Santa Clara County Farm Bureau

Director of Gilroy Local of Sunsweet Growers and Co-op Dryer

Member of Las Animas Post 669 of the American Legion

Appointed to the State Soil Conservation Commission by Gov. Reagan August 13, 1969-1978

Appointed to the Santa Clara County Board of Supervisors Commission on Open Space

September 16, 1969

Appointed member of Urban Development and Open Space Sub-committee of the Santa Clara

County Planning Policy Committee, August, 1971

Member of the South Valley Advisory Committee for Preparation of the South Valley Land Use

Plan, 1975

Served on the Study Committee of the Gilroy Unified School District, 1971-1972

Appointed to the Santa Clara County Agricultural Water Advisory Committee, 1972

Served on the Career Educational General Advisory Committee of the Gilroy Unified School

District, 1973-1975

Member of the Task Force to Study Year-round School Operations for the Gilroy Unified School

District, 1972

Elected Vice President of the California Association of Resource Conservation Districts, 1978 to

1981 and 1986

President of the California Association of Resource Conservation Districts, 1983-1984

Elected to the California Association of Resource Conservation Districts as National Councilman

to the National Association of Conservation Districts, 1973, 1974, 1975

Elected Chairman of the California Resource Conservation Commission, 1973-1975

Designated member of the Santa Clara Valley Water Commission

Appointed to the Federal Rural Environmental Conservation Program Advisory Board for the

State of California representing conservation by Earl Butz, United States Dept. of Agriculture,

1974-1976.

AWARDS:

Goodyear Conservation Award, California Conservation Farmer of the Year, 1960-1961

National Wildlife Federation Achievement Award for Soil Conservation for the Wise Use and

Conservation of the Nation’s Natural Resources, 1970

Certificate of Appreciation for Meritorious Civic Service (for work in the public schools) from the

Masonic Lodge of Gilroy, Ca, 1972

Honorary Chapter Farmer of the Gilroy Future Farmers of America

Recognition and Devoted Service as President of the California Association of Resource

Conservation Districts, 1983-1984

*Bessie, who kept track of the different activities in which Fred was engaged, stopped keeping

track in 1987.