Dallago dies
Ex-McKinley County commissioner, Gallup businessman was 73 years old

By Bill Donovan
Staff Writer

Dave Dallago Sr.

GALLUP — The son of an Italian immigrant, Dave Dallago Sr. is Gallup's version of an Horatio Alger story.

Growing up impoverished, he started his own plumbing company and before he died this past weekend at the age of 73, he lived to see it become one of the top five plumbing companies in the state.

At the same time, Dallago served as a county commissioner for several years in the 1970s and worked hard almost up to the day he died, said long-time friend Harry Mendoza, who grew up with him and spent part of the past week at his bedside.

"He was a good family man," Mendoza said. "He was proud of his family and he will be missed very much."

County Manager Tom Trujillo said Dallago was involved in a number of projects as a county commissioner, including the first renovation of the county courthouse.

But his greatest accomplishment was probably creating a plumbing company that was always run in a professional manner and, during the past 15 years, seemed to get the lion's share of both the residential and commercial plumbing business in this area.

No one who knew him as he was growing up could have imagined the success he would have in his later years.

The son of E. Manuel Dallago, a coal miner who died of pneumonia when Dallago was only two years of age, he was raised by his late mother, Eva, and stepfather, Jesus Reyna, who now lives in Grants.

One of 17 children, Dallago spent most of his early years going to Gallup schools, although there were times when he would travel to California and Las Palomas, N.M., to stay with family members.

His son, Dave Dallago Jr., remembers going one day to Las Palomas and seeing the one room school that his father attended when he was there.

Education was important but there were some things Dave Sr. would find to be even more important, including his decision at the age of 16 to join the army.

Enlistment
The first problem was the army was not taking 16-year-olds. So Dave Sr. got his mother to agree to tell the army a little fib and say her son was born in 1930 and not 1931.

That solved that problem but to solve the other problem (he was underweight), Dave Sr. had to resort to the old banana trick, eating as many of them as he could stand just before he was weighed in.

Evidently that worked because he found himself serving two tours of duty as a medic in the Third Division during the Korean War. While in the army, he went on to get his GED and becoming a high school graduate after dropping out in the 10th grade.

The year 1952 would be good to him.

He not only got his discharge from the army but he would marry the love of his life, Rosemary Baca.

As with a lot of things in his life, meeting his wife was a matter of luck, says his son, Anthony.

Double dateAs the story goes, the two first went out on a double date with Maggie and Joe Padilla, fell in love and later got married. That's also the Padilla story as well since the Padillas also recently celebrated their 50th anniversary.

That was lucky break number one. The second lucky break came later that year when Dave Sr. went to Gallup Lumber to purchase some lumber supplies to fix up their home, which consisted of two rooms and an outhouse.

While there, he was offered a job in the company's plumbing division. Since indoor plumbing was probably on his mind, he immediately accepted the job.

He stayed there for several years, starting as a laborer and soaking up knowledge, becoming an apprentice and finally a journeyman, joining the Local 412.

He later went to work for Gene Lewis at Lewis Plumbing and in 1968, decided to take the biggest gamble of his life, starting his own company.

Working out of his home in the early years, Dave Sr. began a practice of working 10 to 14 hours a day, seven days a week, to make his company a success.

He was helped by local businessmen like John Zollinger, Max Ray and Pete Derizotis, who encouraged him to go out on his own and then when he did, gave him jobs.

But even more importantly, said Dave Jr., these and other friends of his father, realizing that he had a struggling business, paid him as soon as the job was finished so he would be assured of having enough money to feed his family.

Family life
The Dallagos would eventually have four children - Ronald Lynn (who died at the age of 7 days), Dave Jr. (who would later take over the company), Catherine Ann (who died in a car accident age the age of 18) and Anthony (who is a mechanical engineer in Chandler, AZ.)

Everything went well for the family until 1977 when Freedom Homes went bankrupt and the Dallago Plumbing Co., like a number of other small businesses in town, found themselves seriously in debt because of the work they did on the project which would never be repaid.

As Dave Jr. remembers, 1977 would be a miserable year for the family. Not only did Freedom Homes go bankrupt that year, but that was the year their daughter died and the company was audited by the feds (at least there, the family got a break because the audit found no problems).

But Dave Sr. refused to give up and slowly began rebuilding the company, relying on his children to help out when needed.

Both Dave Jr. and Anthony remember starting out as laborers for the company when they turned 13 and then slowly moving up from digging ditches to the most interesting jobs of cleaning the office.

Another commemorable thing about Dave Sr., said family and friends, was his belief in the right of anyone - even one of his own employees - to go out on their own just as he did and start his own company.

"My father would not hold any grudges against any of his employees who did that," said Dave Jr. In fact, he would encourage them to do it, he added.

Dave Sr. managed to convince Dave Jr. to come back in 1991 to work for the company and later take it over and the 1990s would see steady growth in the company to the point where it was, for the first time, taking on major jobs far away from Gallup - including jobs in Utah and on the Navajo Reservation.

Later years
By the end of the century, practically no job was too big for the company, as its size continued to grow from an average of 50 or so employees to, at one time, as many as 94.

Dave Sr. continued to put in long days, but he was beginning to take time off to spend more time with his family and to enjoy hobbies such as big game hunting and deep sea fishing. He also annually purchased season tickets for the Arizona Cardinals games.

Two years ago, however, he learned he had cancer in fact, more than one type and was told he had only six months to two years to live.

"He was a fighter," said Dave. Jr., saying his father refused to undergo chemotherapy because it would severely affect his quality of living.

He did, however, agree to go through experimental treatments that would not require an operation and he did that for the next year which allowed him to continue working part-time, including working on bids almost to the time of his death.

When Dave Jr. was sworn in as county commissioner this past December, he told the audience that the thing he was most happy about was that his father was still alive to see him sworn in.

But in the last few days, he started getting weaker and weaker until this past Wednesday, he became bedridden and a day later went into a coma.

He died Saturday surrounded by family members.

The funeral was held at 10 a.m. today at St. Francis of Assisi Catholic Church. Burial followed at Sunset Memorial Park.

In lieu of flowers, the family asked that donations be made to the Hospice program at the Rehoboth McKinley Christian Hospital.

— Bill Donovan can be contacted at (505) 870-2135 or through his e-mail at indiantrader2001@yahoo.com