1956 – Birth of an Overachiever - Gary was conceived during a shore leave visit by his father, three months prior to his marriage to his mother, who was his father’s high school sweetheart.  His father Joseph Patsy Barbosa born in Newark, New Jersey was stationed on the Coast Guard destroyer, USS Half Moon, which ported out of Governor’s Island in New York Harbor and later Staten Island.  Corresponding by mail there was much tension and suspicion between his mother and father who insinuated that he was not his child.  Born in Newark, New Jersey in the Italian Ironbound section his father Joseph Patsy Barbosa  (Most Handsome – Eastside High School, Class of 1951) married his mother, Bonita Lucille Ansaldo (Most Popular - Eastside High School, Class of 1951).  His father was honorably discharged on the 16 th  of October 1960 from the Coast Guard and took duty with New York City in the East River Harbor Patrol.   These diesel-powered thirty-foot boats had the unique tasks of keeping the oily east river, free of wooded debris, which could disable the rudder or propellers of inbound or outbound cargo ships. His three-person family initially rented the second floor of an apartment (203 Parkhurst Street, Newark, New Jersey) across the street from their family-owned real estate of two generations (198 to 202 Parkhurst Street).  Eventually, when his great grandparents passed, they moved to their little blue house across the street, which was next to the family owned three story apartment building that contained two apartments per floor.  On the first floor resided his first cousins, Salvatore and Marge Ansaldo and their children, Michael, Anthony and Lisa; the second floor his Aunt Lou and his grandparents, Carlo and Marion Ansaldo.   On the third floor, tenants were like an extended family. 1964 – Stepping Up – They moved from a lower middle- class Newark, N.J. neighborhood on Parkhurst Street, west of South Street, to the middle-class town of Cranford, New Jersey.  This kind of economic percolation was unheard in the previous four generations of their family, but his father’s workaholic entrepreneurial “whatever it took attitude”, made it possible.  The Federal Highway Act of 1956 authorized the construction of 41,000 miles of interstate roadways, and everything related to automotive transportation grew and those engaged in those businesses prospered.   You could say that their family was reborn due to this infrastructure.  Enrolling in Brookside Grammar School, in Cranford, New Jersey, he met his lifelong friends. His father departed from the family gas station and towing business to the displeasure of his grandfather who was intent on building a family dynasty out of that business.    He opened his first shipping business called Surf Air Trucking and ran the local office for the Barry Goldwater campaign located at 10 South Harrison Street in East Orange, New Jersey. On a typical afternoon after school while consuming a cold glass of milk and a chocolate confection either a Devil Dog, Ring Ding or Yodel, Gary heard a strange “woop- woop-woop” sound and ran outside his house.   Looking up there was a helicopter with its door open and a man in an orange jump suit leaning out of it right over the chimney of his house.  He ran in calling out for his mother, but by the time she came out, the chopper was gone.  This is not something an eight-year-old would forget, but at this writing it can only be surmised that because the fear of communism was rampant in 1960’s America and due to his father’s position in the local Goldwater office, they must have planted a listening device in that chimney.   Gary never mentioned it afterward and his mother not seeing it herself, probably did not mention the helicopter sighting to his father.  To this day Gary has an autographed picture and “Thank You” from Barry Goldwater who wrote the tribute in Spanish, thinking they were Spanish due to his last name.  1969 – Space Cadet – Gary was captivated by the space program, with particular focus on the mission to the moon and all things science and math.   Star Trek with its vivid and unusual colors on the newly acquired Zenith color TV, became a staple of his existence.   His mother gifted him a five-foot model of the Apollo Moon Rocket for his thirteenth birthday, which he built in detail.   He has it today mounted horizontally above the window of his home office.  When school was out, he found his summers boring. “Ma! What am I going to do!” “Oh, go down the basement and finish what your father started,” she just wanted his nagging to stop. He did go down to the basement and started experimenting with his father’s tools.  His father had started putting wood paneling on the cinderblock basement walls and he finished it using electric hand tools and a hammer with cinderblock nails.   That hammer is in Gary’s current workshop. 1970 – 1972 – Orange Avenue Junior High School, Cranford, New Jersey – Impressed with Sunday football games with his father, Joseph Patsy Barbosa, particularly due to Larry Csonka the Miami Dolphins running back (1971 to 1973) who carried players on his back as he ran, Gary tried out for Junior Varsity Football and made the team as a freshman.    Always second string to another more agile and quick runner, the glory he sought never materialized.   Descendent from a family of blue-collar workers, carpenters and auto mechanics, he excelled at woodworking; designing and building a bookcase, floor lamp and coffee table, all three of which he still has today.   No one taught him any of these trades, they came naturally as if the “know how” was encoded in his DNA.  He built the coffee table in 10 th  grade woodshop and received an A+ from Mr. Miller. His father had opened a customizing business called Gary Customs long before he was born, he took on that name just because his mother and father had liked it or perhaps it was the name of his partner seen to the left in the photos. He worked in his uncle’s body shop, Matty’s Demolition Service during its inception in 1972, where it still operates today in Newark, New Jersey.  His uncle, Matthew Barbosa, Jr., has always been referred to as Matty.   The white building in the picture beyond the tow trucks was the original shop, which Matty seen standing in the doorway.  That summer job helped him pay his way through college due to the limited help from his father who filed for divorce from his mother in 1972. 1973 – 1974 - High School – A good but not great student, he worked in the family business of auto mechanic, body shop, trucking and shipping.   His grandfather, father and uncle owned two Gulf Oil gas stations.   After his father left the family business and went into trucking and warehousing, his grandfather sold his Gulf Oil station on McCarter Highway to the City of Newark, New Jersey, and took over his father’s station on South & Adam Street.   They used the garage that housed their new fleet of four (4) tow trucks as a body shop during the day.  That is where he  spent his summers of both years, sanding by hand - cars and vans.  He had the privilege of pumping gas to the long lines of customers during the first “Arab Oil Crisis” during the summer of 1974.   He played football and started as nose guard on defense in his junior year.   He did not run the ball in for a touchdown, but he did wreak havoc on the opposing quarterback.    A different form of glory was his.   In October of 1973, his good friend Skip Nemeth had an interview at Albright College, in Reading, Pennsylvania.   The two of them drove his father’s station wagon to Albright.   After the interview it was dusk, and they were driving back to New Jersey.   There were no cars on the road but theirs on either side of the two-lane divided highway on a crisp comfortable day.   They were overcome by an eerie silence, looked at each other as Skip drove, then they each slowly peered out of their open windows and looked up.  They saw a fireball above them that vanished toward the horizon, omitting no sounds, only bright light.   In his local Tampa Bay newspaper dated Sunday, June 29, 2019, he read about the “Site of 1973 alien ‘abduction’ earns historical marker in Pascagoula, Mississippi, commemorating the event of October 11, 1973.   He checked the calendar to find that day to be a Thursday, a school day.   He called Skip and told him of what he had read and two days later Skip called back, stating that on Thursday, October 11, 1973, they did go to that interview in Reading, Pennsylvania.   But that was a school day, Gary reminded Skip.  Skip checked his sources and stated that on that Thursday on October 11, 1973, there was a State of New Jersey teacher’s meeting and school was closed that day.   Could it be that they witnessed an alien craft using atmospheric aerobraking as it was heading south to Mississippi, the site of the alleged abduction of two men who were fishing later that night (See Abduction Article). 1974 – 1978 – College - Villanova University in Villanova, Pennsylvania.  Not lacking ambition, he doubled majored in Biology and General Science and accumulated enough credits for a minor in Philosophy.   Out of economic necessity, he kept his first car from high school, a 1970 Ford Maverick that his father’s company (Surf Air Trucking, later reformulated to Ranchero Express) used to deliver small packages.   He dated a girl during his last year of high school, who went to Monmouth College, in Monmouth, New Jersey, for the first two years, and then they broke up.   He met his future wife in the Summer of 1978 at a rock and roll bar called Trade Winds at the Jersey shore.   Sophomore year, he had by chance met an upper classman one year his senior in Organic Chemistry.   He was also pre-med, so Gary scheduled his own curriculum to match that of Robert Faiella and began to befriend his group of notable upper classmen.   Chris McKeena was number one in the College of Chemistry, Calisto Bertin was number one in the College of Engineering, Robert Faiella  was in the top 25 out of 500 in of the College of Biology, Robert Harrington was number one in the College of General Science, and James O’Kane who majored in Accounting and Business.  Today they are leaders in their fields and have accomplished notable careers. And Gary was number 225 out of 500 in the College of Biology.   He was grateful that they did not hold his ranking against him and that they accepted him as one of their notable group.  His academic performance was at times ridiculed, but they did respect the heavy course load that he carried which no academic advisor would have permitted.   That is why he scheduled his own courses that would be impressive to medical schools.   At the time, his best friend (Robert “Boddy” Faiella) stated, “Barbosa you’re a glutton for punishment, nobody takes those courses in sophomore year, just don’t hook it.”    That meant do not get a “C”.   Bobby was a short Italian powerlifter, and they worked out together where he affectionately called Gary, “Big Big Big- G.”  Gary never forgot the then iconic image of Arnold Schwarzenegger posted on the wall of the weightlifting room.  He was laid back leaning on one elbow and almost nude, it was fitting for the times. Bobbi and Gary commuted home every other weekend in his 1970 Ford Maverick to see their girls back home.  In the dead air of winter, he used a carburetor cleaner to start his car in front of Robert Faiella’s house in Hazlet, New Jersey, as Bobby’s father, mother and sister looked on with wide eyes, and untrusting sentiment. 1979 – 1982 – Medical School - The Pennsylvania College of Podiatric Medicine.  Due to his average standing, he was admitted with the condition that he pre-start freshman year in the summer prior to freshman year, to give himself a head start on the first-year courses.   High School was a step up from Junior High, College was another vault up and medical school was another giant leap into academic overload. However, stacking courses in college conditioned him for the onslaught.   That summer he met classmates that would be friends for life, Dr. James Laskey (“Retired and Loving it”), Dr. John Hoffman (Still Practicing), Dr. Don Beckett (whereabouts unknown), Dr. Francis Lynch  (“Financial Titan and Wealth Manager, Connecticut”), Dr.  Leonard Vekkos, (Notable Residency Director and Podiatric Physician – Chicago).  The first two became his roommates in the apartment building next to the Pennsylvania School of Podiatric Medicine in downtown Philadelphia.   They had an apartment on the sixth floor of the apartment building that they were allowed to collectively use as their own gym.  The immature dropping of weights reverberated throughout the entire building, which generated respect and admiration.    They ran at night as a group through downtown Philadelphia and at times he would run alone through the historical district, passed the Liberty Bell and Independence Hall, through old Philly to the pier and back.    He had nothing to fear.  At the time Mayor Russo had literally two cops on every corner.   Occasionally, they ran with fellow student, William “Bill” Kavolcheck, a national quarter mile champion who was scheduled to attend the Olympic Games in Moscow.   He chose medical school rather than competing in the Olympics and luckily so, the games were canceled in 1980, the year that Moscow invaded Afghanistan. It was a great time to be a Philadelphian, the Eagles went to the Superbowl, the Flyers won the Stanley Cup,  Gary’s girlfriend and he survived a seven-year weekend relationship, disco was in, the first Star Wars and Star Trek movies hit the big Philadelphia theaters.  Rocky III and Rambo also graced the silver screen. Gary graduated in 1982, as the first person in the history of his family to go to and graduate from college, and the first person to go to and graduate from medical school.   He could not imagine the pride that his family had felt, with their humble beginnings as illegal (his grandfather) and legal immigrants (everyone else).   However, he has been out gunned by his daughter who is now a veterinarian.  1982 – 1983 – Surgical Training - He computer matched with the second highest paying podiatric medical residency in the United States in Jacksonville, Florida.   They were paid $ 1,000 per month and had access to all the food they could eat in the hospital cafeteria, and a gym down the street at the Hospital Health Center. Gary had asked his girlfriend to move down with him, but she refused, and they broke up that year. He met his co-resident, Joseph Bartley from Columbus, Georgia, who became one of his best friends.  They trained with the famed Dr. Earl (“Boots”) Horowitz, the father of Florida Podiatric Medicine, the first president of the Florida Podiatric Medical Association, founder of the Florida Podiatric Insurance Trust, sub- specialist in lower extremity vascular testing, etc., etc., etc.…….   Little did he know that Dr. Horowitz would treat him as the son he never had, and he would come to regard him as the father he seldom had.   Gary had joked that his name was Barbosawitz to the pleasure of Dr. Horowitz. He toured Florida, looking for where he would set up his medical practice.  His second cousin, Darcel Giangiacomo was attending USF and offered him the couch in her apartment.   He decided on Clearwater, Florida, halfway between Main Street, Dunedin and Curlew Road in Palm Harbor.  His father who said, “Go to Florida, that is where it is happening, that is where it is growing.” 1984 (February 24) – First Medical Office – Gary and his girlfriend Patricia reconnected.  He set up his practice and she was his receptionist, bookkeeper, insurance filer, jack of all trades.     After opening the medical practice together, Gary Barbosa married Patricia Koch that summer.

1956-1984

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