Chris Smith: Santa Rosa resident, 106, celebrates birthday with surprise car parade

Saturday afternoon, nearly 106 years to the day after she was born in Mendocino County’s Anderson Valley, Rose Gaspari got all dressed up for lunch at Riviera Ristorante, which she loves.

But Rose had been tricked.

There was no Riviera lunch planned. Instead, as she stepped from her small, pin-neat home not far from Santa Rosa High School she beheld a city firetruck, its lights flashing.

And behind it, an entire parade of cars, many of them decorated and all carrying relatives and friends of Rose.

The Beatles blared from one classic ride: “They say it’s your birthday!”

Three Santa Rosa police cars cruised past, the officer in the third declaring over the loudspeaker, “Rose, from the Santa Rosa Police Department, we would like to wish you a happy 106th birthday.”

Rose, a native of Navarro and resident of Santa Rosa since 1936, was pretty thoroughly blown away.

Of course wished her late husband, John Gaspari, who’d been a vice president at Exchange Bank, were there. They married 85 years ago, and he died in 1999.

Among the things the two of them loved to do was to play golf at Santa Rosa Golf & Country Club. Nobody has been on the membership roster longer than Rose.

“I’ve been a member there 80 years,” said the Sweet’s Business College alum and former medical and legal office worker.

Rose took in her birthday parade from a wheelchair because she has trouble walking, she believes because of all those decades of golf.

“I have bad knees,” she said.

But, oh, what a life.

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BRETT CROZIER had a lot of people pulling for him. But you probably saw that the Navy has ruled that the 1988 Santa Rosa High graduate will not be restored as captain of the aircraft carrier Theodore Roosevelt.

“The decision wasn’t what we hoped for,” his mother, Gina Crozier, a longtime family and child counselor in Santa Rosa, said Saturday, “but we continue to be thankful for all the support of our friends, family, and community.

“This again shows what a great place we all have chosen to make our home.”

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LIKE BUTTER: Usually, volunteers at the F.I.S.H. food pantry in Santa Rosa have about as much butter to give folks in need as they do live lobsters, white truffles and chocolates with real gold flakes.

“If we ever get to give butter away, we are tap-dancing,” said Kaarin Lee, leader of the extraordinary team at Friends in Service Here.

Well, they are dancing now.

The F.I.S.H. pantry at 1710 Sebastopol Road is a beneficiary of the federal Coronavirus Food Assistance Program that’s purchasing fresh foods for distribution to people who struggle amid the pandemic.

F.I.S.H. had to close during shelter-in-place, but the heroic little pantry is back open a few hours a week, and it has cartons of the CFAP dairy products and produce.

Right now, F.I.S.H. is open noon to 2 p.m. on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays. People having a hard time keeping food on the table can simply show up.

“People do not realize that we’re open again,” said Lee.

But she and her fellow volunteers are back at the pantry, and eager to hand out all sorts of foods.

Especially butter.

You can reach Staff Writer Chris Smith at 707-521-5211 and chris.smith@pressdemocrat.com.