Anthony “El Gringo Dominicano” Galluccio: Finding spiritual solace in helping young cancer patients in Dominican Republic

By Brian Wright O’Connor

Anthony Galluccio has coached thousands of kids on Boston-area baseball and football teams over the last three decades. But nothing prepared him for the toughest task a coach could ever undertake – helping Dominican children battle cancer and, in some cases, sitting with them to face the end of life with dignity, love and hope.

As difficult as it is to share the suffering of young patients and their families, he ultimately finds the volunteer work spiritually uplifting.

“This is something that reminds me that God is present,” says Gallucio. “I know that at that moment the world feels so unfair but also in that moment I feel the strength to just make that child feel loved. Words of support just come out knowing that you are one of the last people they will see.”

During a trip to the Caribbean nation while serving as state senator in 2008, the former Cambridge mayor and city councilor met a teenage cancer patient named Rony Mejia at the oncology unit of the Arturo Grullon Hospital for Children in Santiago.

Struck by Rony’s bright personality and fighting spirit and sharing their love of baseball, Galluccio called several months later to check on him and was devastated to learn that Rony had succumbed to the illness.

While the hospital had done everything in its means to save Rony, its resources were limited. “It didn’t have to be that way,” said Galluccio, who began raising money for treatment, medical supplies and transportation for patients and their families.

“When you go to the Dominican Republic, you learn that their number one commodity is humility, loving their children and fighting for your life every day. The guy who was driving me around on my first trip was the one who brought me to the clinic. That visit changed my life.”

Elected at age 25 to the Cambridge City Council in 1993, Galluccio forged strong friendships within the city’s Dominican community. A broader exposure to Dominican culture came with his 2007 election to the state senate. His district included large pockets of constituents with ties to the D.R. in Boston, Everett and Revere.

He befriended the late Red Sox star Julio Lugo and brought the Dominican athlete to clinics on baseball diamonds where he coached Little League, Babe Ruth and high school teams.

Invited by a Dominican state senator to speak at a cultural center named for painter Candido Bido in the D.R., Galluccio made the first of many trips to Santiago and outlying villages in the fertile Cibao Valley in the country’s north central region.

That initial connection to the Grullon Hospital led to Galluccio meeting scores of other young cancer patients. Ad hoc fundraising eventually yielded to the creation in 2013 of Ashley’s Angels, a non-profit named for an inspiring 3-year-old cancer patient, Ashely Lisandro Vasquez, who fought through her illness and now, cancer-free, just recently turned 16.

The hospital, staffed by medical professionals, nurses, nuns and volunteers, is one of the few in the D.R. with a pediatric oncology ward and a palliative care unit. The facility treats close to 1,000 children a year and admits about 300 for cancer treatment and therapy.

While juggling a private law practice and coaching baseball, Galluccio continues to visit the hospital two or three times a year and adding to over $350,000 Ashley’s Angels has donated to the hospital’s tax-deductible fundraising arm. Earning the trust and friendship of the children and their families has led to heart-wrenching moments.

“I’ve sat in those hospital rooms for hours,” said Galluccio. “I’ve held kids’ hands before they die. It’s a spiritual thing where God takes over and you don’t know what to say. The kids are so courageous. The fact that the families want you to be there is a precious gift.”

Galluccio, honored several years ago by the Boston-based Fundacion Dominican del Arte y de la Cultura (FUNDOARCU), appeared last week on El Mundo Boston’s “La Hora del Café” livestream program to discuss his work.

Seated next to host Alberto Vasallo and FUNDOARCU ex-President Manuel Adames, Galluccio talked about Ashley’s Angels and his own support of Fundoarcu’s scholarship programs, which were highlighted the following night at Fundoarcu’s Dominican Independence Day fundraising gala.

Gently teased by Vasallo as “El Gringo Dominicano,” Galluccio smiled as the program host said of him, “His family may be Italian, but his heart is Dominican.”

Galluccio also demonstrated that his taste buds are as well, extolling the qualities of his favorite Dominican food – chicharron – in passable Spanglish delivered in a heavy Gringo accent.

After the show, former FUNDOARCU board president and Ashley’s Angels board member Alexandra Valdez credited Galluccio with getting her involved in politics and community service after meeting him at a Dominican beauty pageant. She now runs the City of Boston’s Office of Cultural Affairs.

“The first thing I saw in Anthony was his deep love for our community,” said Valdez, who has visited the hospital with Galluccio. “The look on the kids’ faces when they see him – jumping into his arms and hugging him – is unbelievable.”

Images of Galluccio’s visits show the Ashley’s Angels founder, athletically built with Popeye forearms and a bright smile, with children in various stages of treatment. Every one of them has a happy grin.

“I think everyone sees Anthony as a brother, as a cousin and as a friend.”

To Yarlennys Villaman, Galluccio has been supportive of her educational and career ambitions since meeting her mother some 20 years ago through mutual friends. He encouraged her to attend North Cambridge Catholic and arranged for an internship in his Senate office on Beacon Hill, said Villaman, who now serves as director of capital and community relations at the MBTA.

“He’s not only a mentor to me but like an uncle,” said Villaman, who volunteers as vice president of the Fundoarcu board and, inspired by Galluccio, launched her own educational non-profit, Lazos al Futuro, which has provided tuition to some 30 high school and college students in the Dominican Republic.

Like Valdez, she has been impressed by Galluccio’s ability to connect with kids on visits to the hospital she has witnessed. “Anthony’s Spanish is a little broken but he speaks with love,” she said. “As funny as he speaks it, we still understand him. And that’s what matters.”

Galluccio says his work with kids is driven by losing his own father at age 11. Tony Galluccio, an Italian immigrant who arrived in Cambridge as a boy, became a local baseball sensation, was briefly a bullpen catcher for the Boston Red Sox and earned degrees from Harvard and Harvard Law School.

After serving as an Army Air Corps intelligence officer in Europe in World War II, he helped college classmate and future President John F. Kennedy win his first election – to a seat in Congress – and helped craft the strategy that won him a Senate seat in 1952.

His mother, Nancy, a retired Harvard administrator who was beloved and known in Cambridge for her big heart, died last May after helping run her son’s charitable activities in the Dominican Republic for many years.

Galluccio’s paternal grandmother ran a corner store in Cambridge where customers struggling through the Great Depression could count onthe Galluccio family for credit when finances were tight.

Galluccio understands the challenge of providing basic sustenance to households facing poverty. But the Providence College and Suffolk Law grad has also tried to provide even more – access to education and cultural opportunities to enrich the lives of poor kids.

Supporting a Santiago youth baseball team, trips to the beach, visits to a mall, and horseback riding are just some of the activities Galluccio has sponsored for Dominican children.

“From time to time when I go down to visit, I meet a parent who says, ‘You saved my kid,’” said Galluccio. “That keeps me going. The battle these kids wage is not only against cancer but against poverty. I’m just grateful to do what I can.”