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The Perfect Mom

May 11, 2019 by Gary Cardillo

The Perfect Mom

I have often thought about the qualities that would make a mother perfect in the eyes of their children, husband or friends, and I realized not only did I have the perfect mom, but I had married one as well.

To me the perfect mom is someone who is an encourager, a listener, your best friend as you go through life’s ups and downs, a confidant, your best advocate and fierce protector! She typically runs the household, handles the finances, not to mention all the less the glamorous jobs around the home.

She is the social director, your biggest cheerleader and oftentimes the team mom. She has a special way of making the home warm and inviting to family and friends, and no one knows how to make the holidays more special than a mom whose decorative touch and holiday dinners are what memories are made by.

She has that special ability to make you feel loved when you had to be corrected for those miscues, and has an uncanny insight knowing when you need that extra hug or encouraging note for no apparent reason.

Unlike most corporate executives who relish their title and are paid handsomely for their accomplishments, the perfect mom receives no monetary compensation, or title, and is on call 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. The only compensation they seek is the appreciation and love from their family.

How do I know all this? When my mom passed away I felt like I lost my best friend and to this day I still feel her loss. All the attributes I mentioned above described my mother. I consider myself very blessed that not only did I have a mother who was nurturing, but enabled me to soar to heights I never imagined. However, I consider myself very fortunate to be married to a woman who has embodied every quality I feel that makes the perfect mother, partner and friend,and I thank God every day for these two special women he has brought into my life.

I hope you will join me in thanking all those “Perfect Moms” for giving so much of themselves to make our lives and those of our children so very special

-Gary Cardillo

St. Patrick’s Day & Our Irish Roots

March 16, 2019 by Gary Cardillo

As you know, each month we like to highlight the accomplishments of someone who has given much of himself or herself for the betterment of their community. This month we would like to recognize Maewyn Succat. Who’s Maewyn Succat you ask? He isn’t anyone I heard of and most likely isn’t a name you’ve ever heard of either, yet somehow he has impacted our lives in ways you never thought possible.

According to The Old Farmer’s Almanac, Maewyn Succat was born in Britain and around age 16 (around 400 A.D.) he was kidnapped and taken to Ireland as a slave where he worked as a shepherd. After six years he escaped and returned home and received “a calling” to preach the gospel and spent the next 15 years in a monastery preparing himself for mission work. Once he became a priest his name was changed to Patricius and eventually to Patrick. St. Patrick, as he is known today, was considered a patron saint and national apostle of Ireland and is credited with bringing Christianity to Ireland. It is said he used the three leaf shamrock to explain the Holy Trinity, however, many years later the fourth leaf was added by the ancient Celts as a charm to ward off evil spirits. While the Almanac says there is no direct record St. Patrick actually used the shamrock as a “teaching tool,” in the early 1900’s O.H. Benson, who was an Iowa school superintendent, came up with the idea of using the shamrock as an “emblem for the newly founded agricultural club.” In 1911, the “four-leaf clover” was chosen as the emblem for this national club program, later known as 4-H.
Many centuries later, St. Patrick’s Day marks the day of his passing, but it is far from the somber religious holiday you would think. It is perhaps the only day of the year that regardless of one’s religious, political or ethnic background we all become Irish for a day. The saying that sums this up best for me is, “Irish today, Jewish tomorrow.” This is in reference to the year round Jewish deli staple of corned beef becoming part of the traditional St. Patrick’s Day dinner of corned beef and cabbage. And just like New Year’s, there is a camaraderie and revelry on this day second to none. Irish pubs around the world celebrate this day and none do it better than Punta Gorda’s Celtic Ray Public House.

Opened in 1997 by Proprietor Kevin Doyle, “The Celtic Ray,” as it is known by the locals, has continued to evolve and expand from being one of the only places around offering “the quality of imported beers and the atmosphere of a traditional Irish Pub,” to an eating and entertainment destination. As Kevin Doyle, “Publican” so aptly states on his website, “Bars are filled with lonely people. A pub is a very social scene. “You may come alone, but you won’t be for long,” and if you are around this St. Patrick’s Day, you’ll be in good company with hundreds of Irish men and women just like yourself!

Rich in tradition and personality, the bartenders and wait staff at the Celtic Ray take on Kevin’s engaging wit. In fact years ago there used to be a bartender by the name of “Tess.” Tess was a real spitfire. Rail thin, heavy smoker, raspy voice and known for razzing all those who stepped up to the bar. Years ago, a friend of mine decided to stop for beer. Tess greeted him in her usual manner and in her heavy Irish brogue asked, “What’a ya have luv?” My friend replied, “What kind of beers do you have Tess?,” to which she rattled off several imports. My friend said, “How about a Miller Lite,” to which Tess replied, “What di ya say? ya go on a get the hell outta here.” It was her reply that kept customers entertained and coming back for more. A couple of years ago I went there with our son and saw Kevin and asked if he still kept in touch with Tess, as I heard she returned to her home land. Kevin replied, “She went back to Scotland.” “Scotland?” I questioned, “How’s that working out.” Without missing a beat Kevin replied, “She’s a librarian, and this guy came in one day and asked for a book on suicide. She told him, “Go on and get the hell outta here, you’re not going to return it.” I asked Kevin if he was kidding and he said, “It sounded good didn’t it!” I don’t think you’ll confuse Kevin or his Celtic Ray with St. Patrick and his mission work, but somehow the atmosphere Kevin has created is a place where strangers come from all walks of life leave as friends.
If you are looking to make this St. Patrick’s Day one to remember, or just looking to getting in touch with your “Irish” heritage, even if it is for just a day, be sure you make a visit to the Celtic Ray as part of this special day. “You may come alone, but you won’t be for long.”

-Gary Cardillo

Safely Returning Our Children Back to School

August 14, 2018 by Gary Cardillo

It seems like yesterday when I was in elementary school and how I look back to those years with a special fondness. The class projects we worked on together, the field trips we took to places like the Wonder Bread factory where we saw how bread was made and to the Coney Island Aquarium with its vast display of marine life that featured an impressive electric eel demonstration. I think of the excitement we had acting in our school plays and who can forget those countless games of dodge ball during recess! Those were indeed great times. It was a time when riding your bike to school gave you a sense of new found freedom and when your teachers felt a bit more like extended members of the family. It was also a time when moms and dads were able to participate more in your school activities, and who can’t say how excited you were when you looked from the stage during your school play to see the loving support from your parents in the audience cheering you on? Did we have our occasional schoolyard fight or little clicks, sure we did, but overall there was a comradery that carried us through our high school years, creating some very special memories and friendships that are with me to this day.

With the fast paced world in which we live, and so many families relying on two incomes to support their households, it seems like the tenderness of those years I experienced have been compromised. The world of social media, video gaming and the vast offerings we can download from our cell phones, which by the way I’ve been told are more sophisticated than the first space craft that landed on the moon, have changed the way we interact with each other. Rather than calling, today’s generation prefers to skype, text, facetime, Instagram and tweet. Combine this with a family dynamic that is seeing more “quality of time” being compromised, any teacher you speak with today will tell you they are experiencing an educational setting far different than the one in which we grew up.

As a young child, it was pretty cool to say you knew a fireman or a policeman, and with this newsletter being focused around a back to school theme, I wanted to reach out to two good friends of mine, Officer Joe Angelini and Officer Terry Chow, who proudly serve our community as Officers with the Punta Gorda Police Department, to gain their insight on some of the challenges they face today in protecting our children.


	Officer Terry Chow on left and Officer Joe Angelini on right

Officer Angelini serves as School Resource Officer for Sallie Jones Elementary School and in addition to protecting the children of this fine elementary school, also teaches a course in “Bullying Awareness.”As early as kindergarten, Joe makes this one session class mandatory for all grades from kindergarten through 5th. He has the children sign a contract entitled “Grit Pledge,”where they promise to be good role models, be forgivingand compassionate of others and to “speak up instead of being a bystander. “

For the very young children, Joe reads “The Juice Box Bully,” a very interactive book that teaches the children how to stand up for others. For the older children, Joe has developed a very effective power point presentation that includes the effects of “Cyber bullying,” something as children my generation would never have understood. Joe said, “While bullying can manifest itself in many ways, simply stated a bully is someone who continues to act after being told to stop.” He continued by saying,

“in a bullying scenario, you have the victim, the bully and the bystander, and you don’t want to be a bystander and do nothing.”


The Juice Box Bully

Perhaps one of the most effective analogies Joe uses in showing compassion towards others is his use of two apples. During his presentation Joe takes one of the apples and drops it several times on the desk, the other is untouched. Visually they appear the same, but once the skin of the apple that has been dropped is peeled back you the bruising that came as a result of the abuse. Joe’s message to the students is, “You don’t know what someone has gone through in their lives they are keeping inside, so try to be more understanding if their ways are different than yours.”

Terry Chow, Resource Officer at Charlotte High School and now Punta Gorda Middle School, has seen how change in the family dynamic and social media have resulted in some children not only becoming more aggressive with their classmates, but challenging their teachers and school administrators as well. Terry said it starts with the home and if kids are being allowed to challenge their parents, give in to their children’s demands, combined with various social media sites that are more tolerant of confrontational behaviors, that is going to be carried into the school setting.

A question everyone has on their minds is school shootings. When I was growing up we had our school yard fights, but no one ever thought about bringing a gun to school and shooting up his classmates and teachers. Both Joe and Terry responded by saying, when you look into each case, there has been some psychological history or perhaps a copycat behavior that has been either ignored or not acted upon. Terry said a parent should look at changes in eating habits, sleeping patterns, the activities their children are participating in, the friends they keep and what they are watching, as the media hype today has been very polarizing.Both Officers said they are seeing more children today being raised by single parents or grandparents, which in many of these cases results in the absence of a “father figure.” Joe said, he fostered the “Watch D.O.G.S.” program which stands for “Dads Of Great Students, and is an innovative father involvement educational initiative of the National Center For Fathering.”

Joe said they look for “dads” to come to the school to spend some time with children with no father figure, who will become role models for these children. He continued by saying,

“Moms were always involved, but now we are trying to get Dad’s more involved in the children’s school activities.”

Both Officer’s Angelini and Chow have told me for years how the Punta Gorda Police Department prides itself in being able to answer any call in under 5 minutes. They said while the schools have taken great steps in securing the entry into the buildings, they have created a security presence they feel will deter an “active shooter” situation. While these officers have been trained to go aggressively “right to the threat,” they also stress the importance in training the student body and staff in how to respond in an “active shooter” scenario and on August 9th, Officer Chow conducted an “Active Shooter” presentation held at C.P.A.C located on the Charlotte High Campus.

In closing, the back story that always seems to be missing is the passion and love for the children these Police School Resource Officers have that never seems to be reported. Both of these officers not only protect and defend the residents and children in our county, but they have coached some of our children and have given tirelessly of themselves to many non-profit organizations apart from their police duties. Their story is not just about making our children safer, it is about their love for community and a desire to give these children every unobstructed chance to pursue their dreams to the fullest; and they will never end a conversation with you without saying, “Please let me know if I can ever do anything for you or your family,” something we don’t hear enough of these days.

–Gary Cardillo

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