John Gonnella, beloved figure in Occidental, succumbs to cancer

Even in the last weeks of life, John Gonnella kept on whistling.

“I could hear him coming from 50 yards way,” recalled his brother, Tom.

“I’d tell him, ‘How can I be more depressed about you being sick than you are? Gimme some of that, bro.’”

A widely known and beloved figure in Occidental — “he was the unofficial town mayor for years,” said Tom — John Gonnella died Nov. 20 after a three-year-long battle with multiple myeloma, a cancer of plasma cells. He was 68.

Gonnella twice underwent bone marrow transplant procedures at Stanford, where his relentless positivity served as a helpful, uplifting influence on his fellow cancer patients, doctors told his family.

He was the longtime partner of Marci Ritch of Santa Rosa, whom he met in 2007. Both had been married once before.

“Johnny always said he didn’t have any regrets, except he wished he met my mom sooner,” said Alena Wall, Gonnella’s de facto daughter-in-law and the mother of two of his four grandchildren, whom he adored.

In addition to owning and operating Occidental Hardware for over 30 years, Gonnella served more than 50 years with the town’s volunteer fire department — 30 as assistant fire chief, 20 as a director on the board — and two decades as a member of the Occidental Community Services District.

“For a community to be a community,” said Tom, “you need people like my brother.”

All four of John and Tom’s grandparents emigrated from Tuscany, in Italy, to Occidental, said Tom. Both brothers worked at Occidental Hardware, originally owned by their father, Louis. In many ways, said their friend Pat Corcoran, Johnny’s “small-town values and sense of community” made him, in some ways, “a throwback to an earlier generation.”

That hardware store was a hub of the community when John owned it, Corcoran said, a place people visited whether they needed to buy something or not. “If we don’t have it,” Gonnella would joke with customers, “you don’t need it.”

Sitting at his familiar post on the bench outside the store, Gonnella was a clearinghouse of information; a repository of facts, anecdotes and the history of the region.

Because everyone in town was either related to him or to someone he knew, “he knew everything that was going on,” said Corcoran.

“He knew what trails to hike, where to fish, where to find mushrooms. He’d been all over those trails, ever since he was a kid.”

John Gonnella was also the driving force behind the town’s excellent slow-pitch softball team, the Occidental Benders.

Even after he moved to Santa Rosa a decade ago, Gonnella never stopped making the 15-mile drive every Sunday morning to ring the bells at St. Philip the Apostle Church. When Sunday mass was canceled during the depths of the COVID-19 pandemic, recalled Alena Wall, he would drive out and sit in the parking lot, “just to be in that space.”

Nor did Gonnella stop picking up boxes of produce at Andy’s Produce Market in Sebastopol, then driving them to Monte Rio and Occidental for distribution to the needy.

“He was doing that up until a week ago,” said Wall. “Putting others before himself was just part of the fabric of who he was.

“John was big on staying in the moment, reminding us that every day is an extra day. Every day is a gift.”

During his brother’s cancer journey, added Tom, “he had the most courage I could imagine someone having, in that situation.

“He was just a genuine, positive guy and if you knew him, he was your friend.”

You can reach Staff Writer Austin Murphy at austin.murphy@pressdemocrat.com or on Twitter @ausmurph88.