Barry Del Buono, who died Dec. 26 after a battle with cancer, played many roles in his 74 years. He was a former priest. A husband and father. A longtime nonprofit leader. And a homeless advocate who spent his third act as a teacher.
“Barry’s arc was not just the homeless,” said his son, Don Ho. “It was improving the livelihoods of people.”
That certainly seemed to be his life’s mission. Maile Del Buono, his wife for the past 19 years, said people who remembered him from his days as a priest would stop her to say that he changed their lives. The same could be true for the clients of Loaves & Fishes Family Kitchen, which he helped found in 1980, or EHC LifeBuilders — now known as HomeFirst — which he led for 27 years before retiring in 2007.
Del Buono grew the organization’s annual budget from its initial $17,000 to nearly $10 million.
U.S. Rep. Sam Liccardo, who knew Del Buono for four decades, described him as having a combination of “chutzpah and deep commitment to his mission.”
“Whether he wore a collar or not, he understood who he was serving,” said Liccardo, the former mayor of San Jose. “Certainly, his passion for tackling homelessness became infectious. He used every tool at his disposal, and the community is better for it.”
A memorial service will be held Friday, Jan. 16, at 10 a.m. at St. Joseph Cathedral Basilica in downtown San Jose.
Del Buono was a large presence — figuratively and literally — on the Silicon Valley nonprofit scene, even though his family said he really shied away from the limelight. His son, Ben Del Buono, got a first-hand look at his father’s work — whether it was serving people in a kitchen line or attending fundraising events with the valley’s movers and shakers.
“Throughout all of this, my dad didn’t have to talk much about what he did. Now I think maybe that is because he didn’t have to. He showed us, through our own experiences and in the impact his work had on Silicon Valley,” he said.
But while he was looking out for the least fortunate in the valley, Ben Del Buono says he was still the “ultimate family man,” coaching football (even though sports weren’t his thing), trying fishing lines and “owning” Christmas Eve. He enjoyed big family dinners, surrounded by his five children and seven grandchildren.
In his mid-50s, he entered his third act. He met his second wife, Maile Ho, at an American Leadership Forum retreat. An instructor at San Jose City College, she encouraged her husband to start teaching, and he became an associate faculty member in sociology at SJCC.
Even when he went into the hospital for the last time in December, Del Buono was still preparing his students’ grades and decided to give everyone an A. “They don’t need food and they don’t need shelter,” his wife recalls him saying. “But they need the grades.”
His final project brought together two major passions of his career — housing and education. He was working on a plan to build teacher housing for San Jose Evergreen Community College District at Evergreen Valley College, something his son, Don, hopes can come to fruition as his legacy.
“Barry was the consummate giver,” Ho said. “Even if he didn’t have anything to give, he still gave.”
HOW ABOUT DAMP JANUARY?: Mike Guerra, co-owner of Ancora Vino and Enoteca La Storia, isn’t thrilled with all this Dry January business. And can you blame him, given that he sells wine for a living?
“When did January become the month where perfectly reasonable adults decide the best way to start the year is to suffer — on purpose?” Guerra pondered in an email to customers.
He says people who need to take a break should abstain by all means. But he worries that when people challenge themselves to give up drinking for a month, they might also give up being social and around other people for that month out of fear they’ll slip up. And that’s not good, either.
His solution is “moderation, not deprivation,” with people making “thoughtful choices you can actually live with — in January and beyond.”
I’ll drink to that.
BUILDING BRIDGES: What does it mean to “belong”? You could gain some insight into that question from the three authors of this year’s Silicon Valley Reads selections, which are centered around the theme “Bridging to Belonging.” I’ll be talking to them on stage at the De Anza College Visual and Performing Arts Center on Thursday, Jan. 15 at 7 p.m.
If you need a reminder, this year’s books are “The Power of Bridging” by john a. powell, “Mainline Mama,” by Keeonna Harris and “Unlikely Animals,” by Annie Hartnett. You can register for the kickoff event — and check out some of the more than 200 other free programs — at www.siliconvalleyreads.org/calendar.
And if you arrive early or stick around afterward, you can check out the art exhibit, “A Sense of Belonging,” at the Euphrat Museum of Art.
ONE OF THE BOOKS: Dana Arbaugh let me know that Ed Cavallini, a retired U.S. Marine who fought at Iwo Jima and led the Milpitas library for more than two decades, died Dec. 24 at 102.
That Cavallini survived Iwo Jima at all was a miracle, Arbaugh told me. He was struck by shrapnel during the battle, which was slowed down by his dog tag just enough so that it lodged onto his heart but didn’t penetrate it. “It was still imbedded on his heart when he passed Christmas Eve,” Arbaugh said.
Cavallini also served during the Korean War and was on the founding board of the Monterey Jazz Festival when the iconic event was created in 1958. He joined up with the Santa Clara County Library District in 1974, where he oversaw the Bookmobile, before becoming librarian in Milpitas in 1978.
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