S
ally and Larry Connell moved
to Gilroy in 1969. Larry’s a
native of San Luis Obispo and
Sally was born in Illinois. They
met in the 1950s as students in
the same class at UCLA and got married
the same year they graduated. It was fun
to get to know them and how they came
to live here in our fair city.
Sally had transferred to UCLA from
the University of Wisconsin when her
parents moved to Pasadena. She joined
a sorority and guess what? Larry just
happened to be living in the basement
of the sorority house. He was working
there as a hasher. The Sorority house
employed a German cook. She needed a
kitchen helper, a pot washer to be more
specific, someone who could make the
pots and pans spotless. Larry convinced
her that he could do the job, which
came with lodging in the basement.
But Sally and Larry didn’t meet in
the sorority house, they met on campus
one day when Larry spotted Sally
wearing a University of Wisconsin shirt.
Let me back up here and give you a
little background.
Larry is an only child. His parents,
Dale and Ruth Connell, moved to Gilroy
from San Luis Obispo in 1947. But in
the years before that, Dale had joined
the Navy and gone off to the war. Dale
and Ruth had put six-year-old Larry on a
Greyhound bus headed for South Dakota
where Dale’s brothers ran a farm. Back
to the bus…little Larry spent several
days under the care of Greyhound bus
drivers until he arrived safely in South
Dakota. Although he was given money
to buy food, he never had to spend it
because he always met nice people on
the bus who shared their food with him.
Larry traveled back and forth between
California and South Dakota for three
years. All in all, his time on the farm was
a great learning experience, his uncles
were like older brothers, and Larry
discovered that South Dakota was a
great place to buy fire crackers!
Larry was in the eighth grade when
the Cornells came to Gilroy. During
his studies at Gilroy High, he was
advised to join the Navy Reserve Officer
Training Corps. He continued with that
at UCLA. Immediately after graduation,
he was ordered to Pensacola, Florida,
for Flight School. Advanced jet training
took him (and Sally) to Kingsville,
Texas; Mountain View, San Diego, and
Lemoore (not far from Harris Ranch on
Interstate 5), California; Jacksonville,
Florida; and Norfolk, Virginia. His tours
of duty included many flights over
the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans as a
carrier jet pilot. The aircraft carriers that
he served on were the Bon Homme
Richard, the Hancock, and the America,
where he performed more than 300
aircraft carrier landings at all hours
of the day and night. Larry retired as
a Captain in the United States Naval
Reserve in 1994.
When Larry and Sally came to
Gilroy, Sally got right into community
involvement serving twelve years on
the Gilroy Unified School District
Board of Trustees. She and her fellow
trustee Maryann Brugman would often
go to Digger Dan’s (where CVS is now
located) to debrief. They would ask to
sit in the dining room to have private
time, making sure no one else from the
board would be there, so as to avoid
a quorum!
Sally was also instrumental in the
establishment of the Theater Angels,
the forerunner of the Gilroy Art
Alliance. Theater Angels purchased
the W