Articles by Jack Foley

About Jack Foley

Longtime local journalist and Pulitzer co-winner Jack Foley has worked for San Jose Mercury News and Gilroy Dispatch for more than 20 years and has covered Gilroy for much of his 30-year journalism career. Since 1976, Foley has lived in and around Gilroy.

Hot Gilroy Nights

The annual garlic festival put Gilroy on the map, but car shows and music might be the real spice of life in what arguably is the most aromatic city on the planet. And as if to put an exclamation point on it all, the Gilroy Chamber of Commerce this year has revved things up a [...]

The power of empathy

Ever since the first blow was struck, humankind has searched for the secret to peace. For some, it’s the absence of war or a marriage without conflict. For others, it’s a classroom minus the bully or it’s freedom from alcohol, drugs or an abusive, overbearing boss. But how [...]

Spring vs. Sprawl

Rene Spring has the kind of paternal love for Morgan Hill typical of folks born and living into adulthood in hometowns that dot the American landscape. From Maine to Miami, Seattle to San Diego and throughout the heartland, the phrase born and raised is spoken with [...]

tenor pasquale esposito on beach in santa cruz, ca photo by Deanna Graham

Passion for popera

When he showed up to study voice at San Jose State University, dragging a thick accent from the streets of Naples, Italy, Pasquale Esposito didn’t make much of an impression on his professors. He’d eked out a living crooning partisan-pleasing Italian standards such as “O [...]

Roland Velasco, Gilroy's First Mexican-American mayor

Alcalde!

GILROY MADE HISTORY last month when voters elected the city’s first Mexican-American mayor, Roland Velasco. Sworn in Dec. 21, Velasco becomes the 34th person to hold the office since the city incorporated in 1870, and the first whose family hails from south of the Rio Grande. [...]

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