Obituary: Gilbert de la O, 77, founder of St. Paul’s West Side Boosters

Frederick Melo, Pioneer Press
·5 min read
Obituary: Gilbert de la O, 77, founder of St. Paul’s West Side Boosters
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As an 18-year-old Mexican-American kid growing up scrapping with white youth in St. Paul’s West Side Flats neighborhood, Gilbert de la O thought of himself as battle ready, even for one as sweeping as the Vietnam War. He enlisted after high school, bragging about how many Viet Cong soldiers he would kill.

Then came the fateful day in April 1966 when de la O — then an infantryman and radio operator — found himself pinned down in an ambush, watching friends fall and carnage unfold all around. He saw a 21-year-old Air Force medic named William Pitsenbarger literally drop from an overhead chopper to tend to the wounded, only to be found the next day among the dead.

Asked in recent years to appear in a celebrity-driven Hollywood movie about Pitsenbarger’s sacrifices, de la O declined, calling the memory too emotional in an interview with Pioneer Press columnist Rubén Rosario in 2020. The street tough kid once jailed for shooting a gun at rival teens had returned from Vietnam humbler, grateful to be alive and fundamentally changed.

De la O — a Purple Heart combat veteran, a founding member of the West Side Boosters youth athletic league, a former St. Paul school board member, a member of the Neighborhood House Hall of Fame and life-time achievement award holder from Humboldt High School — died Sunday after a long fight with cancer at his longtime home on St. Paul’s West Side. He was 77.

He is survived by Joyce, his wife of 55 years, and sons Roman and Diego, as well as 14 grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

“It’s such a loss,” said St. Paul City Council member Rebecca Noecker, recalling how even in his final years de la O would contact her about trash or graffiti on a beloved neighborhood memorial.

“He was an icon. No question,” Noecker said. “It’s hard to imagine the neighborhood, or the city, without him.”

De la O was such a fixture of the Mexican-American community on St. Paul’s West Side that in 2007, the popular El Rio Vista ballfields on Robie Street were renamed in his honor when he retired from a leadership role with the Neighborhood House community organization.

For more than 30 years, he had worked closely with youth at Neighborhood House.

De la O was born in 1945 in New Ulm, Minn., a kind of base camp for migrant workers who spent their winters in Texas. Interviewed in 2010 by the Minnesota Historical Society, he recalled growing up in the West Side Flats alongside many working class Jews, learning about their culture firsthand.

For both Mexican-Americans and Jews, the city was not always hospitable. Residents of the West Side Flats were displaced by a devastating flood in 1952, only to see their remaining frame houses leveled in the 1960s to make room for a levee and industrial park.

A few years after his return from Vietnam, de la O enrolled in the University of Minnesota, where he became active in efforts to establish a Chicano studies program. In media interviews years later, he credited his time at the U of M with helping him redirect his childhood anger into political protest.

In the 1960s, he joined a chapter of the Brown Berets, a pro-Chicano movement that took its cues from the Black Panthers while fighting for education, job access and housing equality.

“When he came back from war, and he saw there were no opportunities for our kids of color, he took the opportunity to change those poisons into medicine,” said Maria Isa, a performance artist and political advocate on the West Side. “He didn’t want us to live through that. He was our coach. He was our chief.”

When Isa, a candidate for state representative in House District 65B on the West Side, decided to run for office, “he was the first person to say, ‘Go win, go get it,'” she recalled.

In the 1970s, De la O co-founded the volunteer-led West Side Boosters youth athletic league, which would spawn more than one professional athlete. Former Neighborhood House executive director Armando Camacho, who called de la O’s son Diego one of his closest childhood friends, recalled being coached in football by de la O in the mid-1980s.

“He’s been a father figure to many on the West Side, including myself,” Camacho said. “A lot of kids who didn’t have father figures, Gilbert played that role. He kept literally thousands of kids off the streets. … My proudest achievement at Neighborhood House was the renovation of the ballfields, which are in his name.”

In May 1997, de la O announced his candidacy for St. Paul School Board, achieving the influential endorsement of the St. Paul Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party two days later. He campaigned in part on public anger over the firing of Larry Lucio, the state’s first Mexican-American public high school principal.

The next year, apparently with de la O’s blessing, Lucio was chosen as grand marshal of the West Side’s longstanding Cinco de Mayo parade.

A memorial for de la O will begin Thursday at 10 a.m. at the Church of St. Matthew, 510 Hall Ave. in St. Paul, followed by a burial Mass at 11 a.m. Internment with military honors will take place at Fort Snelling National Cemetery. Arrangements are being prepared by the Klecatsky & Sons West Chapel in West St. Paul.

“In lieu of flowers,” reads his prepared obituary, “Gilbert requested that in his honor you would spend time with your family and friends enjoying a meal around the table.”

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