The late Carlo ?Sleepy? Pallazola earned many championship flags during the St. Peter?s Fiesta sporting events.
Two Greasy Pole flags in 1956. Multiple American flags as scuttler and rower for men?s seine boat champion crews in a rowing career that spanned six decades and ended at age 66.
On Sunday, June 30, Sleepy earned his very last flag, one that perhaps best identifies the respect he earned from those involved in the four-day city festival that honors the patron saint of fishermen.
Now, Pallazola will forever be honored with a memorial fund in his name. Money will be raised for Fiesta sports, as well as youth sports, on Aug. 16.
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His last flag
It was ?Champions Day? for the Greasy Pole competition, some 57 years after Sleepy won his two titles. The day before, Saturday, June 29, Sleepy died at age 76 after lifelong illnesses. He was surrounded in his home by his large Sicilian family.
Nicky Avelis, a family friend and Greasy Pole champ, visited Sleepy earlier that day, promised him he?d win the Sunday competition, and then took Sleepy?s 1956 champion flag to have it signed by past champions before he returned it to Sleepy?s family.
?Nicky told me to bring the flag to the beach and hold it,? Sleepy?s daughter Janelle said. ??When I win the pole I am handing you my flag like I promised Sleepy,? Nicky said.?
Avelis won, handed the new flag to Janelle like he promised on Pavilion Beach, and took back Sleepy?s 1956 flag remade by local artist Marty Behsman. Avelis carried it around for a few moments before the two exchanged flags once again.
?It was like a storybook unfolding,? Janelle later recalled. ?It was unbelievable. Just like he promised.?
Friends and family say Sleepy was a dedicated father, hard-working fisherman and incredibly humble Fiesta champion and ?legend? who kept the annual celebration near and dear to his heart since growing up in its backyard at 53 Fort Square ? where the city?s earliest Sicilian immigrants settled in the early 20th century.
?Sleepy was a man that was all about tradition and family and was proud to come from a fishing family and to have been a fisherman himself,? said Tom Brancaleone, Fiesta sporting-event announcer. ?He wanted the Italian community to be represented well during the year as well as our annual feast. A fisherman?s patron saint is honored, and everyone respects the true meaning.?
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Genuine respect
Deeply revered down St. Peter?s Square, a seine boat crew in 2005 named itself ?Sleepy?s Heavy Artillery? two years after he retired at 66. They won.
Another crew that didn?t win was called ?Sleepy?s Gang.? Sleepy was buried with his Raging Bulls champion jacket.
That seine boat crew won in 1987, 1988 and 1989. Another family friend, Stephen Goulart, who walked the Greasy Pole in Sleepy?s honor, put a piece of wood from the Greasy Pole inside his casket.
In retirement, Sleepy was a ubiquitous presence around the St. Peter?s Club, the downtown staple and Fiesta central. Each time Greasy Pole walkers had an informal reunion or gathering, Sleepy was involved, captured through countless images of young walkers surrounding the old veteran down Pavilion Beach.
The day of his funeral earlier this month, a downtown convenience store said, ?Closed for Sleepy?s funeral.?
?He was so well respected,? Janelle said. ?People would want to take pictures with him. He always said he did it for heart and tradition. He never dressed up or anything like that for the Greasy Pole ? not that he thought there was something wrong with it.?
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?Deity status?
Gloucester?s James Tarantino, who rowed with Sleepy, was one those who had a deep respect for Sleepy, calling him a ?Fiesta Legend.?
?Growing up down the Fort, that made him deity status in my eyes,? Tarantino said. ?As children swimming at Pavilion Beach, we would paddle our inflatable floats with our arms pretending to be the ?Arizona Sleepers? in the seine boat races.
?When I actually got the opportunity to row for Sleepy with the Raging Bulls (87, 88, 89 champs), he always glowed with quiet dignity,? Tarantino said. ?I was the loudmouth, but we shared something special. We became very close because we both had a deep love and pride for our family traditions and Fiesta in particular. Sleepy was so proud of all of us. He made us better because his pride was contagious. You didn?t want to let him down.?
Tarantino visited Sleepy as he was under hospice care the day he passed ? shortly before Tarantino was to row for Kaos in the men?s seine boat semifinals.
?His daughters told me not to be disappointed because he wouldn?t be responsive,? Tarantino said. ?They weren?t sure if he could hear me. When I went in and told him, ?You?ll be with me in that seine boat today, Sleepy,? he must?ve thought I meant I wanted him there physically. He sat up and started talking to me. I couldn?t make out what he was saying, but I was so moved I promised him a victory.?
Two boats ahead during that race at the quarter-mile halfway point, Tarantino yelled out, ?Thank you, Sleepy!? Kaos won that race, and then won its unprecedented sixth overall title the next day.
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Special connection with daughter
Sleepy?s daughter, Leeanne, is a multiple Fiesta rowing champion and one of the few original women?s rowers still rowing today nearly 20 years later.
Pallazola, who now lives in Colorado, remembers when she was 9 watching from the Fort playground when her father rowed with Arizona Linquata on that ?Arizona Sleepers? crew.
She told her mother, the late Joan, who died one year ago Friday, July 26, that she was going to be an ?Arizona Sleeper? rower someday. She ended up rowing with her father in 2001, the first year original mid-90s dynasty Affirmative Active was separated. She finished third.
?But in my heart it was and will always be the best race,? Pallazola said. ?His health started to decline in ?02, and I knew I got my one and only dream race. He had always been on the beach since then cheering.?
As his daughter?s crew?s scuttler ? or boat-steerer ? Sleepy never lost his competitiveness even though the crew was losing.
?From atop the stern I remembering him screaming, ?Don?t give up. Don?t give up. Never give up,?? Leeanne said. ?He always used to say on the Friday of Fiesta, wherever he was or whoever he was with, ?I gotta go, my kid is rowing.? The pride in his smile will be with me always. That is better than any trophy. Isn?t that what Fiesta is all about??
Sleepy?s strength and humility in Fiesta circles are qualities he carried into his life the other 361 days of the year. He had to be strong, raising four daughters (Carla, Leeanne, Janelle, Jaime) with wife Joan and at the same time undergoing five open-heart surgeries and two strokes.
But he fought his lifelong ailments gracefully, believing in his doctors and willing himself year after year, Janelle said.
?He fought until the end and never complained,? Janelle said. ?Whatever the doctor told him, he?d just say, ?OK, let?s do it.??
Sleepy was a commercial fisherman on the Gloucester boats Serafina N. and Rockaway, then went on to work for Gorton?s of Gloucester. He loved to cook the big Sunday family pasta dinners and all kinds of fish. And he loved watching his grandchildren play sports around town.
No meal, however, could make Sleepy as happy as he was with family and friends around the Fiesta in June. In his final moments in his home last month, daughter Leeanne had a message for her father:
?Dad, you can go now. Just reach for the flag.?
Seconds later, Sleepy took his last breath. The next day, he earned his final Fiesta flag from the Sunday Greasy Pole champion.
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