PORT ANGELES — Dan Di Guilio, a former Port Angeles mayor and regional transit system pioneer known for his steady leadership, died Tuesday night at the Sebastian Riverside Medical Center in Florida after a sudden heart attack.
The 68-year-old Aberdeen native and retired Clallam County Transit System general manager went to the hospital late Tuesday after he had trouble breathing, his wife Carol, 68, said Wednesday.
“There was no real warning,” she said.
The couple, who have two grown sons, moved in summer 2016 to Sebastian, a town of 22,000 on the east coast of Florida near where Carol, a retired Olympic Medical Center operating room surgical technologist, has family.
The Di Guilios would have celebrated their 48th anniversary in September.
“He was my best friend from the get-go,” Carol said.
Di Guilio won two terms on the Port Angeles City Council, in 2007 and 2011.
Former Mayor Karen Rogers served on the City Council with Di Guilio during his first term and on the Clallam Transit board when Di Guilio was the transit system’s general manager.
“I’ve been in shock all day,” Rogers said late Wednesday.
“He was what I would say is one of those quiet leaders.”
Former Public Works Director Glenn Cutler is a family friend who visited the Di Guilios in October.
“When he spoke, you listened,” he said. “I always found him to be a fair individual, balanced, very thoughtful.”
City Manager Dan McKeen informed city staff of Di Guilio’s death Wednesday morning in an email.
“Most of all, he was a special part of our community,” McKeen said.
Until moving to Florida, Di Guilio was a lifelong Western Washingtonian.
After graduating from Aberdeen High School, he served for three years in the Army as a military policeman.
He attended Western Washington University on the GI Bill and was close to completing his master’s degree thesis in sociology when he was hired as a planner with the Grays Harbor County regional planning commission.
When the nearby Pacific [County] Transit System hired him as its first general manager, he began his 27-year career in public transportation.
So began Di Guilio’s 27-year career in public transportation.
“It started out in basement of the South Bend courthouse,” Carol recalled.
“He said, ‘I know nothing about Transit,’ and they said, ‘you know how to write grants, right?’ and he learned the rest from the ground up,” Carol recalled.
he Di Guilios moved to Port Angeles in 1995, where Dan headed up Clallam Transit System.
He retired in 2005.
During his tenure, he served two terms as president of the Washington State Transit Association and was on the feasibility committee that created the Washington State Insurance Pool, established during the insurance crisis of the 1980s, former insurance pool Executive Director Allen Hatten said Wednesday.
Di Guilio helped turn the organization into the largest transit insurance pool in the U.S., one that insures more than 100 million miles, Hatten said.
“We owe an incredible debt to Dan Di Guilio for his masterful expertise in management,” Hatten said.
The transit pool’s Dan Di Guilio Service Award, which is based on merit, not annual accomplishments, is given to a transit insurance pool governing board member or alternate who contributes to both a transit agency and the insurance pool’s operations.
“It’s a pretty high bar to meet,” Hatten said.
In 2007, two years after his retirement from Clallam Transit, he decided to enter public life again by running for City Council.
He handily won two terms, in 2007 against Edna Petersen, 57 percent to 43 percent, and in 2011 Noelle Fuller, 62 percent to 38 percent.
“He liked the challenge, liked dealing with people, and trying to be open and fair,” Carol said.
The couple were firm believers in municipal water fluoridation in January 2016 when Di Guilio, in his final meeting on the City Council, voted in the minority against the city continuing the practice — which the City Council eventually did discontinue seven months later, in August.
“He said no matter what he felt personally, he was gong to vote the way the community had expressed, the way they wanted to go, so he would stand behind the community,” Carol said.
“The one thing he would always say is, if I have to be known for anything, it’s that I made a difference by participating.
“His goal was just to make a difference in places in a positive way.”
Carol met her future husband in Kansas at Fort Leavenworth, where her father was an officer.
Di Guilio, directly out of basic training, was a guard at the disciplinary barracks.
“Maybe that’s where he learned how to negotiate,” she said.
“He said you had to learn how to talk and be fair and be straight with them, and don’t play any games.
“At 19, that was pretty admirable, because he was in there with some pretty bad boys.
“That’s the way he was.”
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Senior Staff Writer Paul Gottlieb can be reached at 360-452-2345, ext. 55650, or at pgottlieb@peninsuladailynews.com.
Port Angeles Mayor Dan Di Guilio, left, speaks to a group of bicyclists from Taiwan after their arrival in Port Angeles by ferry in this April 2014 file photo. (Keith Thorpe/Peninsula Daily News)
Port Angeles Mayor Dan Di Guilio, left, congratulates outgoing City Council Member and Deputy Mayor Don Perry a City Council meeting. Perry was honored for his service as council member and for serving two years as deputy mayor. (Keith Thorpe/Peninsula Daily News)
