By LYNN SCHNITZER
Greg O’Brien has come full circle from growing up a toubled teen to his years of service to the YMCA and president of the Valley of the Sun YMCA.
A bad choice made by Greg O’Brien as a teenager turned into a lifetime devotion to fitness and mentoring youth on how to make positive choices.
I was caught going into someone’s house in Marin City, trespassing, when I was 17. I was offered a chance to go through Marin Youth Court instead of traditional incarceration and I took it.
said O’Brien explaining the Marin Youth Court works with Marin’s YMCA organization to offer first-time offending juveniles an alternative to sitting in juvenile hall.
O’Brien seized the opportunity, learning first with mentor Marty Hanzlik how to run the front desk of the YMCA. After that, O’Brien was on the fast track.
He (Hanzlik) promoted me, gave me more opportunities,
O’Brien said. Soon O’Brien settled into the ’Y’ culture, taking jobs available to him at the organization and working his way into the directorship of Marin’s YMCA in 1985.
Growing up one of eight children in Marin City, O’Brien remembers his father as a bodybuilder who imparted his fitness values to his children early on in their lives, but with time his father quit working out and eating healthy eventually contracting diabetes.
That’s probably what fueled my drive to stay fit. I became very involved in health and fitness programs for adults and senior citizens,
O’Brien said.
From his dedication, O’Brien eventually became the director of the national YMCA fitness specialist school where he worked with children.
Working with disadvantaged youth, I started an I-Learn program for high school dropouts to obtain their GED’s, and through this program 1,100 students graduated,
he said.
Through the years, O’Brien worked with the YMCA as a national health and fitness trainer as well as a director of three cardiac- therapy programs. He served in Phoenix, Ariz. for some time, home of the first YMCA, offering the National Silver Sneaker Program, a senior-exercise program.
His impressive professional history continues, becoming executive director of the Marin YMCA then eventually the president of the Valley of the Sun YMCA.
As part of his time in the organization Sons In Retirement, O’Brien recently started a program offering health and fitness walks at Shollenberger Park the third Wednesday of every month.
All along, O’Brien stayed true to his effort to always lead a purpose- driven
life, believing as he said that God put me on this earth for a reason. I feel fortunate that I got to help youth and now I am helping seniors grasp the importance of my passion, which is staying fit.
Published - February 16, 2017
By Harlan Osborne
Paul Masselli founded Masselli & Sons Hardware on Lakeville Street.
From the street, Petaluma’s M. Maselli & Sons appears to be an ordinary hardware store, similar to other outlets where a shopper can stop in for new faucet valves, hinges for the gate or a flexible garden hose.
And, of course Maselli’s carries these items, along with every other conceivable tool or replacement part any contractor or weekend handyman could possibly need.
But the view from the street and from inside Maselli’s 15,000-squarefoot hardware store is just the tip of the proverbial iceberg – a 7-acre salvage yard with far from ordinary inventory of tools, pipe, steel and building materials also sprawls out behind the shop.
The family-owned business on Lakeville Street bears little resemblance to the original 2,700-square-foot building Paul Maselli and his brothers, Pete and Jim Maffia, constructed in 1960 to sell government surplus supplies. But 56 years ago, few people recognized the vision and determination that Paul Maselli possessed to succeed.
Among the key components of his success is the fact that he’s a calculating risk-taker willing to gamble that his unique perspective on business would eventually pay off.
That risk-taking trait was probably handed down from his grandfather, who madeperiodic business trips from his native Italy to New York City in the latter part of the 19th-century, and from his father, Micheli Maselli, who spent 14 years undertaking adventuresome travels across the U.S. before eventually ending up in Sonoma County.
It was also Micheli Maselli’s risk-taking that led him to form his family.
It was 1928, during Prohibition, when Maselli was busted for making the alcoholic beverage grappa and sentenced to a stint in the county jail. Noting that he was an accomplished dairyman, a local judge released him to the custody of a friend, Lena Maffia, a widowed Sonoma dairy rancher with three small kids.
From left, Jim Maselli, Virginia Maselli and Paul Maselli.
Not surprisingly, a romance blossomed and the couple soon married. Paul Maselli was born in 1930, joining step-brothers Jim and Pete, and step-sister Josephine. A sister, Mary Maselli, came along later.
In 1941, Micheli Maselli took a job at a Sausalito shipyard, selling the dairy business but keeping the property. The next year, the family moved to North Beach in San Francisco, much to the consternation of 12-year-old Paul Maselli. Around the time Paul graduated from Galileo High School in 1948, his family relocated to a home they’d built in Petaluma.
Paul Maselli was working at Mare Island Naval Shipyard when he was drafted into the Army during the Korean conflict and sent to Fort Bragg, North Carolina, where he met his future wife, Lena.
Married and out of the service in 1954, he quit his shipyard job and began selling cars in Petaluma for Sanderson Ford and G.K. Motors.
In 1960, Maselli, his brothers and Shorty Long each invested $1,000 and formed a partnership.
They named the business M. Maselli & Sons after Micheli Maselli, and started out selling the only supplies they had, which were 51 tons of government surplus bolts. Amid tough competition, they started adding pipe and steel to their inventory, before mixing in hardware and items that ranchers could use. In a calculated move, Maselli once purchased a decommissioned cold-war Nike missile site (sans missiles) and salvaged its parts.
Additional acreage was acquired in 1966 and a building housing Maselli Ironworks was built, but after a few years the Ironworks was sold. In 1974, Maselli made a concerted effort to grow the business by adding commercial grade and heavy industrial materials.
In 1980, 20-year-old Jim Maselli joined his father and within a year, thanks to his expertise and advice on expansion and changing with the times, the business grew substantially.
Today, Jim Maselli is the sole owner, and his own sons are deeply involved in the family business, which also features Rustore,
an inspiring concept of using repurposed, recycled and salvaged metal in creating sustainable art.
Jim and I are not only father and son, we’re great friends. There aren’t many family-owned businesses still around,
said 85-year-old Paul Maselli, who lost his wife to cancer in 2006. I’m proud of the success we’ve enjoyed and I’m excited about where we’re headed. I’m very proud of my family for keeping it going – we all work together.
Paul still shows up for work every day and, along with his 92-year-old brother Pete, and 93-yearold sister Josephine Pucci, who are frequent visitors, enjoys greeting and socializing with long-time friends and customers.
Published - August 4, 2016
By MICHAELA WESTERN
Shari Ranney puts a llama Christmas ornament that she got in Ecuador while on a Rotary trip on her Christmas tree in her Petaluma home on Monday.
The three Rotary clubs within Petaluma are known for their outstanding spirit of volunteerism in the community, and club members have been involved in a multitude of local projects. However, the widespread reach of Rotary’s spirit of service extends beyond Petaluma’s city limits, and even and beyond the borders of the U.S.
This November, Petaluma Rotary member Shari Ranney embarked on her second excursion to Ecuador to attend the country’s 11th annual project fair, a three-day event where Ecuadorian Rotarians present ideas for projects to better their country to visiting Rotarians in hopes of gaining funding.
The Rotary International Foundation developed a matching grants program for international projects that take into account one of six focus areas, such as clean water or sanitation and education, Ranney said. There are strict guidelines that need to be followed to qualify for the grant money, and Ecuador has worked diligently to become a world leader in administering these projects, she said.
Ranney evaluated the nearly 30 project ideas presented at the fair and brought the information back to her club, which ultimately identified two projects that matched the guidelines from the fair to help fund with the grant system: a venture that will provide clean water and continued education about maintaining the systems and applying for future grants to six Ecuadorian communities, and a microcredit
effort that helps establish a small community bank to loan money to Ecuadorians to provide them funds to get their businesses or projects off the ground, Ranney said.
She said that while the projects are implemented by the Ecuadorian Rotarians, the funds are generated locally through fundraisers, community events and member dues.
With matching funds at both the local district level and at the Rotary International Foundation level, a little bit goes a long way,
Ranney said. In this process, friendships develop and there’s plenty of goodwill to go around.
Other local Rotarians joined Ranney on the trip, including Barbara Barney of Sebastopol Sunrise Rotary, Dale Knight of Rohnert Park-Cotati Rotary and Jo Thornton of Petaluma Valley Rotary, she said. Rotarians from Canada, Philadelphia, Alabama and Washington were also in attendance, she said.
Ranney, who’s been involved with Petaluma Rotary for about five years, said she jumped at the chance
to help make a difference. The 58-year-old said she hopes to travel to Nepal or Thailand on her next Rotarian adventure.
Shari Ranney receives rose water on her hands during a planting ceremony in Ecuador while on a Rotary trip.
I really appreciate the opportunity to get involved with other countries and cultures,
she said, adding that her club has also participated in projects in Thailand, Mexico and Chile. We’re a global society and Rotary affords us the opportunity to explore some of that and interact with the world. Our mission is service above self … that’s our main motto in the international area as well as locally.
While on the 10-day trip, Ranney and her fellow Rotary members also had the opportunity to visit the sites with Rotary International projects in action.
She headed to La Esperanza, the site of an organic demonstration farm that’s part of a project that her rotary club previously helped fund, to attend a two-hour blessing ceremony by a shaman. She said much of the area’s land is used for cultivating roses that are shipped internationally, and often preserved with chemicals that will ensure the flowers arrive at their destination in pristine condition. The demonstration farm will provide farmers who spend much of their time in the hothouses tending roses with a resource to connect them to the tools to grow healthy food for their families.
They have land that they can farm, but they’ve forgotten how,
Ranney said. There are all these ancestral seeds and grains that they can grow there, and this project has created a seed bank and equipment that they can all borrow as well as a demonstration farm. They can take that knowledge back to their farmstead and grow healthy, organic food.
In addition to her visit to the farm, Ranney also took a trip into the jungle with local guides and a canoe excursion down the Napo River.
Ecuador is not the only country that participates in Rotary International projects; while Ranney was there, other local Rotarians were around the globe aiding in the execution of other projects, including Petaluma Rotary Club member, Jim Becker, who was in Nepal delivering equipment for a telemedicine
project that provides technology for Nepalese doctors to collaborate with U.S. doctors that the Sebastopol Sunrise Club is leading, along with other local clubs, she said.
Ranney hopes that her club — and others within Sonoma County — will continue to support the projects in Ecuador as a way of widening the impact that Rotary International has on the global community.
Our club will continue to be involved with projects in Ecuador and it’s my hope that in the years to come other members of my club might have the opportunity to represent us and experience the culture and hospitality of the good people of Ecuador,
Ranney said.
Published - December 24, 2015
By Harlan Osborne
John Dado, a longtime Petaluma resident, stands outside his home on Monday.
When it came time to write about deeply rooted, third-generation Petaluman John Dado, his business career, community involvement and his passionate love, support and participation in local sports, I sensed that if ever a person could be described as a quintessential Petaluman, Dado fits the criteria.
Dado’s father, Walter Dado, was working as a city policeman, and his mother Opal, the sister of Petaluma’s longest-serving mayor, Jasper Woodson, was working as a bookkeeper at the Silk Mill when their only child, John Henry Dado, was born at Petaluma General Hospital in 1935. The family resided at 320 Post St. in a house built by John Dado’s grandfather, Henry John Dado, a pioneer Chileno Valley dairyman and a founding member of the Petaluma Co-operative Creamery, in 1913, before selling his ranch and moving into town in 1924.
In the early 1940s, Walter Dado accepted a job as a field representative at the creamery, prior to the arrival of Gene Benedetti, who took charge of the plant in 1946, the same year that he spearheaded the creation of the Petaluma Leghorns semi-pro football team.
When the Leghorns, who practiced at McNear Park and played their games at Petaluma High’s Durst Field, needed a water boy to pass out towels, hand out equipment, or run onto the field with a water bucket and ladle, 11-year-old John Dado was chosen for the job, an envious sideline experience that earned him an official Leghorn’s jacket.
Despite his close proximity to Leghorn’s football, Dado’s athletic prowess leaned toward other sports, prompting him to transfer to Petaluma High and its larger sports programs, from St. Vincent’s, which he had attended through the eighth grade. At PHS Dado was a sparkplug guard on Coach Dean Price’s Trojan basketball squad, a solid third baseman on Bill Abbey’s baseball team and as a elite sprinter, was named the track team’s 1953 Athlete of the Year. He finished his athletic career with eight varsity letters and is a proud member of Petaluma High School’s Athletic Hall of Fame. Graduating fifth in his class, he enrolled at Santa Rosa Junior College on a Doyle Scholarship, where he became a star quarter-miler, making it to the state meet in Fresno.
He’s one of the oldest members of the Petaluma Golf and Country Club, having joined in 1959, and as a fast-pitch softball enthusiast, he enjoyed a lengthy career playing for the city league Petaluma Merchants and Giacomini Trucking and later managing Greyview Farms. After that, he coached Sonoma Joe’s of the National Little League.
John Dado smiles for a photo during a visit with Santa Claus in San Francisco in 1940.
Following SRJC, Dado attended University of San Francisco, graduating in 1957 with an accounting degree. Returning to Petaluma, he was employed by accountants Begley & Deaton until 1968 when he became a founding member of the CPA firm of Wadsworth, Smith, Morhman, & Dado, which became Smith, Mohrman, Dado & McKenzie in 1976, and Pisenti & Brinker, in 1991.
In 1987, Dado was one of 14 investors that founded the Bank of Petaluma.
Although its board of director’s were entirely local, none of them were bankers, so they enlisted the talent of banker Wally Bragdon and the bank became a trusted financial institution, expanding to five branches before becoming a part of Wells Fargo Bank.
Retired from banking since 1991, Dado is a past president of the Rotary Club of Petaluma and the Petaluma Kiwanis Club.
A member of the SRJC Foundation Board and the friends of SRJC Petaluma Campus Trust, he’s recently retired as chairman of the Finance Committee of St. Vincent Parish. He and his wife Sharon are the parents of two sons, John, an attorney and CPA, and Craig, the Executive Vice-President of Del Mar Race Track in southern California.
Sharon Dado, retired from a 30-year teaching career, 28-years of them as a kindergarten teacher at Cherry Valley School, dedicates her time educating elementary school students about the habitat, life-cycle and migration of the Monarch butterfly.
Known affectionately as the Butterfly Lady, she dresses as a Monarch butterfly and takes milkweed containing butterfly eggs from her home garden, to the classes. Milkweed is a vital source of nectar and the only plant the Monarch’s will lay their eggs on.
Thanks to the efforts and promotion from butterfly lovers like Dado, the Monarch butterfly population is rebounding.
Published - November 26, 2015