Every good old city, town or borough in the good old USA needs a Bill Peloza.
Good old Auburn, for sure.
The guy who serves pancakes at the senior breakfast, who forks the bacon and pours the juice, and, perhaps best of all, is there for cleanup.
The former commander of the local Veterans of Foreign Wars post, never misses a meeting if he can help it, who proudly marches in parades, heart on his sleeve, head under cap held high.
Peloza, the consummate joiner and club man, who found in his younger days a natural aptitude and devotion for community service, first with the Knights of Columbus, with the Seattle Chapter of the Boeing Management Association, the Des Moines Junior Chamber of Commerce (Jaycees) and finally the Auburn Rotary Club, always with a handful of civic projects spinning in the air, a pleasant throwback to the generations for whom such business and community-minded groups were the social hubs of their lives.
Peloza, husband, father of two, former police volunteer, proud member of the Sons of Italy.
First elected to the Auburn City Council in 2003 after suffering a painful loss in the previous election to Gene Cerino, Peloza served four terms, and was deputy mayor for 2019.
In Peloza’s 16 years on the council, he has served on the Valley Regional Fire Authority governance board, the National League of Cities, the Sound Cities Association, the King County Regional Policy Committee. the King County Metropolitan Solid Waste Management Advisory Committee. the King County Metropolitan Water Pollution Abatement Advisory Committee, the King County Water Resource Inventory Area, the Green/Duwamish and Central Puget Sound Watershed Management committee and the WRIA 9 Watershed Ecosystem Forum.
A whirling dervish.
He arranged the first Boeing donations to the White River Valley Museum and the Auburn Symphony Orchestra.
Without Peloza, there would be no Auburn International Farmers Market, and perhaps no up-to-date Auburn Municipal Golf Course Clubhouse.
Yet when the City Council convenes in January, Bill Peloza won’t be there.
Time and tide? No doubt.
Also, for the last year, Peloza has waged a mostly private battle with pancreatic cancer. Characteristically optimistic about his chances, there’s no doubt that the chemotherapy, which has taken most of his hair, had sapped some of his prodigious energy.
For all Bill Peloza has been and will be to the Auburn Community, the Auburn Reporter has named him its Person of the Year for 2019.
Recently, the Reporter met with Bill and Joyce Peloza, 62 years married, in the Lea Hill home they moved to 20 years ago. The enthusiasm they feel for the vista their domicile opens onto Mount Rainier over their immaculately-groomed backyard garden has never waned.
“Hey, look, you might be able to see it,” said Bill, jumping to his feet and pointing to where the momentarily cloud-shrouded mountain would soon be.
“Pretty soon, the mountain’s going to pop out,” says Joyce.
Peloza’s story begins in Ballard in 1934 then shifts to Seattle proper, where his grandparents and his aunt and uncle raised him, near present-day Harborview Medical Center.
Educated in a shuffle of Catholic schools. Peloza remembers fondly his days as an altar boy at St. James Cathedral, serving at mass in his little red cassock.
“I can still see myself in the sacristy with the nun saying, ‘OK now, Bill, get that Latin right,’ ” Peloza said with a laugh.
He joined the U.S. Navy at the urging of buddies, and his service during the Korean conflict was one of the formative experiences of his life.
“It taught me responsibility, character, respect for authority,” Peloza said. “We all were in the same boat, so to speak; we were all treated the same way. Except you got to the officers, that is; there was a distinct difference. You’d salute ’em when you were going down the passage way. The military has those standards that are important. If they didn’t, there’d be chaos.”
Out of the Navy, Peloza attended the University of Washington School of Business, where he specialized in government contract management.
He and Joyce met at a dance in 1957. he with a full head of brown hair, impressive in his new civvies and overcoat – “but I didn’t buy a hat, I don’t know why in hell I didn’t buy a hat.…
“My buddies and I would go out to this tavern in Northgate, went out one night to dance, and I was in a booth with two or three other guys. listening to great, live music when guess what,” he recalled, eyes turned toward Joyce. a pretty girl with an aptitude for numbers, whose father operated a steam-engine yarder for the White River Lumber Company above Enumclaw.
“I thought he was cocky,” Joyce said of her first impressions of Bill.
But didn’t long for them to get hitched.
“Seventeen days. til we eloped,” said Joyce, clearly the keeper in this pairing of accurate dates, numbers and addresses.
“I’m surprised. That’s quick … oh, she’s good, ” Bill said, nodding to Joyce, who smiles.
The couple lived in Enumclaw for a time, he still working in Seattle and attending the UW, she the head teller at the National Bank of Enumclaw.
It was in those early years of their marriage Bill Peloza discovered his love for community work.
“Somebody asked me to join the Knights of Columbus in Seattle, so I did, and the first thing they did was get me on some work parties, and I just liked it, being involved in a project,” Bill said.
“When we built our home in Des Moines, this guy knocks on the door and introduced himself as a member of the Jaycees. I didn’t know what that was, so I joined the Jaycees. At that time, they had a great structure,” Bill said.
Thus began the career of one of the ultimate get-it-done guys, as evinced by the many, many awards bestowed on him over the years. In 1963 he won the Jaycees big award, the Henry Giessenbier, today kept in an honored place at home and still a source of pride for him.
The Pelozas moved to Auburn in 1970, which is where he and fellow Boeing employee and later state Senator, Frank Warnke, got him involved in politics.
“We had him over here for dinner, and with council elections coming up he said, ‘You’ve got to run for council,’ ” Bill recalled.
“I told Frank I’ve never forgiven him,” Joyce laughed.
His first campaign committee met in the Peloza living room.
He lost to Gene Cerino that year by two votes on the initial count, then, by recount in late December, four votes.
“It was terrible,” Peloza said of that narrow loss.
Over the years, Peloza has been a member and past trustee of Auburn Sons of Italy Lodge 1955, a member and past trustee ofAuburn Elks Lodge 1808, a member and past commander of VFW Auburn All American Post 1741, a member of the Auburn Rotary Club, a member of the Auburn Airport Advisory Board, the White River Valley Museum Board of Directors, ACAP’s Board of Directors, the Auburn Symphony Association, the Auburn Police Department Volunteers and the Boeing Management Association.
In addition, he has served as president of the Auburn Green River Men’s Golf Club and the Auburn Youth Soccer Club, was a commissioner for the South King County Soccer Referees Association, a Junior Achievement advisory member, an instructor and co-chair of the Chinook Elementary School PTA and president of the Des Moines Junior Chamber of Commerce.
“I don’t think people realize how much he’s done, big things, and little things that don’t show,” Joyce said. “I was at a meeting just recently and this one person said, ‘I will love that man until I go to my grave for what he did about that doggone pot shop that was going to be in our neighborhood.’ And he and I served breakfast at the senior center every year up until this year.
“I thought when he retired in 1995, we’d have all this free time,” Joyce added. “Dream on, Joyce!”
“I have a very high social conscience,” Peloza said.
