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03/22/2017 08:30 AMA few years ago, Vincent and Margaret Diglio, who run the Madison Community Services Food Pantry, spoke at a meeting of the Madison Exchange Club, then took questions from the group.
“I asked about what their wish list was,” says Gordon Gregoretti, a retired manufacturer who was in attendance. “One of them was the fact that if someone could take care of the rent for us it would be a major help, so I thought about it a couple weeks, and then I decided I would do it.
“They said, ‘God sent us an angel,’” he recalls. “I got a laugh out of that one.”
Gordon has paid the rent for the food pantry’s storage and distribution center, at 50 Mungertown Road, ever since. According to Cheryl Campbell, MCS’s president, he also covers the pantry’s electric bill and has paid for a new produce refrigerator and a new freezer compressor.
Cheryl Campbell nominated Gordon as Person of the Week. Gordon himself prefers to maintain a low profile.
“I don’t need the town to know what I’m doing there,” he says. “It’s not important to me. If it’s going to help the food pantry, maybe incentivize other people to do things, well, so be it. Then this interview is good.”
Gordon supports other causes, including, he says, the Wounded Warrior Project, the Special Olympics, and his church, St. Margaret’s. He also contributes when he learns about a neighbor in need.
On a smaller scale, he likes to help out the youth groups doing things like bake sales.
“When I come out of Stop & Shop,” he says, “and they’ve got the Girl Scouts and the boys’ swim team or whatever and they’re selling cookies and cakes, I’ll give them 20 bucks and I won’t take anything.
“That’s certainly a small amount of money, but if everyone who came out of Stop & Shop gave them 20 bucks, they’d be doing pretty good.”
The food pantry, Gordon says, is the cause that’s closest to his heart.
“I think it’s the most important thing,” he says. “There are people around who are hungry. And I know that story, too. I’ve been down that road, so to speak, when I was young.”
Gordon was born in 1943, in what he calls “the Italian section” of Meriden. When he was 11, his family moved to Southington, where he attended public school.
“I was a reasonably good student if I applied myself,” he says, “but I was more of a hands-on guy.”
So during high school, he transferred to Wilcox Technical High School in Meriden, where he learned machining and tool-and-die making.
As for college, Gordon says, “I didn’t have the opportunity. I had to go out and work. There was a family situation.”
Gordon’s understated manner of speaking masks what is a remarkable success story.
After finishing trade school at 18, he says, “I started work for different small companies. I slowly went along, and then I decided to buy a piece of equipment and try on my own. I knew a couple of people who would give me a chance to do some of their work.
“I started from the cellar,” he says. He’s speaking literally—”It was in my father’s cellar. I was 22 years old when I went into business.”
In the meantime, Gordon had joined the Connecticut National Guard, just as America’s involvement in Vietnam was escalating.
“They were starting to put some units overseas,” he says. “We were lucky. We were ready to go, but we never got the call. Thank goodness.”
Gordon moved his business, which he called Greg Manufacturing, into a larger space, “a three-car-garage thing.” As he expanded, he moved to Cheshire.
In 1987, he acquired Reliable Manufacturing, a precision-machining company in Bloomfield that, among other products, makes aircraft-engine parts for such companies as GE, Pratt & Whitney, and Rolls-Royce.
In 1993, Gordon was named Connecticut Small Business Person of the Year by the Small Business Administration, an honor that involved a trip to Washington, D.C., with other states’ honorees and a handshake in the Rose Garden with President Bill Clinton.
Typically, Gordon downplays the achievement.
“I got a little plaque in the garage,” he says.
At the time, he told the Hartford Courant, “I know there are a lot of companies that did a lot better than Reliable last year. But we’ve progressed in adverse times.”
Gordon took on his son, Mark, as a partner in Reliable, intending to have Mark take it over eventually, but Mark wanted to pursue other business interests, so they sold the company in 2008.
Gordon retired. Mark is now a partner in a small manufacturing company in Berlin.
Gordon met his wife, Susan, who is English, through her brother, a business associate of Gordon’s, in the summer of 1968. Susan and her family were visiting on vacation.
Her brother asked Gordon to take Susan out on a blind date.
“I said, ‘I don’t want to do that.’ He said, ‘Please.’”
Gordon and Susan evidently hit it off, but it was a whirlwind courtship.
“We only had like six, seven weeks,” Gordon says.
Susan returned to England with her family.
“I sent her a diamond at Christmastime,” Gordon says, “and then the following year, she came back and we got married.”
Gordon and Susan raised their family mostly in Chester. They first came to Madison as renters, then bought a summer house. Their current home has views of the Sound stretching from Hammonasset to Branford.
“I always said I wanted to live on the water,” says Gordon.
The couple enjoy playing golf and spending time with their grandchildren. Mark, who lives in Guilford, has two children. Their daughter, Kate, has three. Kate’s family lives in Macon, Georgia, but comes for long visits.
Gordon and Susan generally try to get away to Florida in February, to flee the cold or, as he puts it, “get out of this mess here.”
Although Gordon has in the past contributed his time and physical effort to community service—what he calls the “beaver work”—his support now is mainly financial.
Asked what he gets out of making donations, he says, “I get inner peace. I’m happy I’m doing it. I’m happy for the people who are benefiting by it.”
Gordon would encourage others—especially young people—to find a way to contribute.
“Regardless of what you’re doing as far as trying to help the community,” he says, “as long as you’re trying to do something, the smallest of things means something.”