Sam Gurwitt File Photo
Council member Harry Gagliardi.
People knew something was brewing whenever a mischievous grin crept across Harry Gagliardi’s face.
He would lean back in his chair, furrow his brow, and cross his legs. His elbow rested on the side of his chair. His head rested in his hand, his index finger pointing up to his temple, his middle finger and thumb against his cheek.
When he spoke, his eyebrows pressed together in consternation. It took chutzpah to say what Gagliardi said, the way he said it. That never stopped him.
Beloved “Mr. G.”, a thorn in the side of mayors and council presidents, a walking tape recording of Robert’s Rules of Order, and an indefatigable advocate for governmental transparency and fiscal responsibility, Gagliardi was found dead in his home Tuesday. At 76, he was in the middle of his eighth term on the Hamden Legislative Council. He had struggled with health problems for years. (The cause of death was not immediately available.)
Gagliardi is the second sitting member of Hamden’s council to pass away this year. Mike Colaiacovo died in July.
Over the course of his political career, Gagliardi served three different districts. First, he served one term starting in 1987 in the sixth district, then two terms from 1997 – 2001 in the seventh, and finally from 2011 until the present in the second.
Harry A. Gagliardi Jr. was born June 26, 1944, and moved to Hamden when he was 16. He lived there until his death. He taught fifth and sixth grade for 27 years in North Haven before spending 12 and a half years as an administrator in Seymour. He ended his career as principal of Anna LoPresti School.
Gagliardi did not let anything that caught his attention slip by him unaddressed. He never hesitated to ask a question that made a department head squirm. Nor did he hesitate to take a stand and refuse to back down even when he knew he would not win. Many in Hamden’s political scene looked to him as a model of a fearless fighter and a political mentor. He was an extremely personable curmudgeon with an “impish” sense of humor, as longtime friend John Flanagan put it.
And, yes, he did get people furious. But once he was done arguing with them, he’d ask them to sit for a drink.
Gagliardi at his last in-person council meeting.
As he put it in an interview with the Independent last year, “I’m not a yes person for the mayor. I think I ask questions with some meat to them.”
Gagliardi described himself as a fiscally conservative progressive. He was a Democrat, and often sided with young progressives in town politics who took up the cause of fiscal responsibility that he had been pushing for years before they arrived on the scene.
“Honesty in government is truly what he wanted,” said former Democratic Town Committee chair and de-facto historian of all things Hamden politics Joseph McDonagh. “He didn’t want people to be doing stuff behind his back, or behind voters’ backs. He wanted it to be out in the open and transparent.”
For many years, Gagliardi did not have many allies on the council. He didn’t mind a 13 – 1 vote if he was convinced of his stance, which he almost always was. “He wouldn’t let go. He got something, and he was convinced about it, and he would pursue it,” said McDonagh. “He would go after it with a vengeance.”
He added: “He raised really important issues, obviously.”
Brad Macdowall, Cory O’Brien, Justin Farmer, Gagliardi.
In the last few years, Gagliardi was a part of a group of vocal council members who often voted with him. In the current and previous terms, he frequently took stands with Justin Farmer and Brad Macdowall, the two youngest members of the council.
Before that, he was often alone.
“Harry Gagliardi was the guy asking the tough questions on the council,” said Macdowall. “When Justin and I came on the council, he was the one thorn in leadership’s side.” Now, he said, when he and Farmer are frustrated, “we always ground ourselves in the thought that there was a time when Harry was doing this on his own… He was the guy complaining about fuel master. He was the guy complaining about our debt. He was the guy complaining about basic mismanagement by the administration.”
When Macdowall and Farmer came on the council, both said Gagliardi took them under his wing.
“He was the resident parliamentarian. He was the provocateur. And he was a friend. And a mentor,” said Farmer. “I see him as, like, a political grandpa.”
He was always the person who spoke in opposition to the administration, said Farmer, and “he was not always liked for that. But he was respected for a principled approach to politics.” He added: “He gave everyone a hard time equally.” And then he would ask whoever he had argued with to a drink afterward.
“There were times on the council floor we might get testy with each other,” said Council President Mick McGarry. “But he was always the first to offer you a drink at Mickey’s — a conciliatory drink. He was always clear it was not personal. He just wanted to make sure things were done the right way.”
As McDonagh put it, Gagliardi created grudges, but he never kept them. “There were people who had grudges against Harry. I don’t think Harry ever had a grudge against anybody.”
“Usually when an argument came up about an issue, if he lost, he lost graciously, and if he won, he won graciously,” said John Flanagan, who served with him for many years on the council. “If he thought he was right, you were in for a long evening if you were on the other side of the argument. But once it was over, it was over… He always realized that it wasn’t personal.”
Gagliardi never took himself too seriously, Flanagan said. He was very sharp, and he took his business seriously, but he always knew how to laugh at himself.
Then there was his encyclopedic knowledge of Robert’s Rules of Order.
Gagliardi, center right, at his last inauguration, next to McGarry.
“Point of order,” he would interject, leaning forward in his chair, when something wasn’t right. He would remind Council President Mick McGarry that he had forgotten a procedural step.
“Yes, Mr. Gagliardi, you’re right,” McGarry would reply.
“I cannot even count the number of times we said at a council meeting: ‘Mr. Gagliardi, how do we get out of this,’” said McGarry. Oftentimes, McGarry said he would go to Gagliardi before a council meeting to ask him how to go about a difficult procedural sequence. “And he would know. He would have an answer.”
“He was one of a kind,” McDonagh said. “A really good friend. A person that you could rely on and trust. I’m going to miss him terribly.”
“Mr. G.”
His political colleagues said they could see the educator in him.
“He was so much fun … When you came to the realization that something was going on, he would get just the cutest smirk on his face,” said former councilwoman Lauren Garrett. “You could tell that that educator heart just never left him.”
Those who knew him as a teacher and principal pointed out many of the same characteristics his political colleagues came to love — or, in some cases, hate.
Rebecca Champagne was a student at Seymour High School when he was an assistant principal there. A few years later, when she was fresh out of college, Gagliardi hired her as a kindergarten teacher at the LoPresti school.
“He was just wonderful,” she recalled. “He was very tough. He held staff and students to high standards, but you always knew that he wanted what was in the best interests of students and staff. He was really one of the ones that stuck up for staff and protected us. He was just a really amazing guy.”
Once, when she first started teaching, she moved a student to another reading group without knowing she needed administrative approval to do so. Gagliardi “stormed to my room, and in his way” told her she had broken a rule.
She fixed her mistake, and Gagliardi left. About 45 minutes later, she said, she saw him waiting outside her classroom. “I just wanted to check on you and make sure you’re ok,” she recalled him saying. “I didn’t mean to yell at you or make you upset.”
Whenever she saw him after he retired, she said, “I knew a big Italian hug and kiss was coming.”
Known as “Mr. G.” to his students, he also left a big impression on those he taught.
Leila Tofig Mustakos had him for sixth grade at Ridge Road Elementary in North Haven in the 1970s. Back then, she said, everyone sat at a desk facing the front of the class, and there was no focus on emotional and social learning as there is now.
“But Mr. G. was very different. We didn’t sit at desks, we sat at tables,” she said.
Tofig Mustakos is now a teacher herself. Gagliardi taught the way teachers are taught to teach now, she said, but in the 1970s — decades before his style became best practice. The buzzword in teaching now is “social-emotional learning,” she said. That was always Gagliardi’s focus.
He stressed citizenship, and paid close attention to group dynamics and how his students interacted with one another, she said. He made sure they learned time management, and figured out how each individual student learned best. Students would get to design their own projects instead of being told what to do.
“You didn’t get that in a traditional elementary school back in the 1970s,” Tofig Mustakos said.
Like his approach to politics, his approach to teaching could be polarizing too, she said. Some parents didn’t like his more progressive teaching methods. But kids loved him.
“A lot of kids wanted to be in his class. He was fun. He did fun things,” she said.
Gagliardi did not have any kids of his own, though he had step children, nieces, nephews, and cousins. He also had a girlfriend, or, “the lady I’m seeing,” as he would refer to her, said Garrett. According to his obituary, a memorial service will be held at a later date because of the pandemic.
The Hamden Democrat Town Committee members from the second district will soon recommend a replacement. The council will then vote to appoint a new member.
“Whoever it is, it’s a major change,” said McDonagh. “Harry’s going to be missed even by the people whom he plagued” — always with “that devilish grin.”
I served on the Legislative Council with Harry and learned so much from him. He was a wonderful colleague and an invaluable parliamentarian. News of his death was a shock and his death marks the end of an era. My thoughts are with his family, friends and colleagues, to whom I send my deepest sympathy. Harry was a good man. May he rest in peace.