www.montereycountyweekly.com SEPTEMBER 7-13, 2023 MONTEREY COUNTY WEEKLY 13 Lou Calcagno was first and foremost a dairyman, raising cows in Moss Landing. He was born on the family dairy along Elkhorn Slough in 1936, and he died there on Thursday, Aug. 31. He married his high school sweetheart, Carol Calcagno, and together they took over the dairy on May 1, 1960 and named it Moon Glow, for the moonrise views from the living room. Calcagno was also an influential force for decades in Monterey County politics. He served for 18 years as a county planning commissioner, then 16 years (four terms) as a county supervisor before retiring at 78 in 2015. Among his proudest accomplishments, Calcagno listed the expansion of Monterey-Salinas Transit to South County; the Prunedale Improvement Project and other updates on Highway 101, transitioning stop signs to entrance/exit ramps; a community park in Pajaro; and the acquisition of the former Capital One campus in Salinas for a government center. “Highway 101 made a big difference in people’s lives,” says Henry Gowin, Calcagno’s long-time aide. “It was probably close to a billion dollars in improvements.” Calcagno claimed not to care about politics and angering any particular constituency. Mostly, he was interested in getting results. “I worked my ass off and got a lot of things done,” he said. “I can say I left the community in better shape than before I was here.” He said he hoped that more businesspeople would run for local government. “He had very strong convictions,” Gowin says. “His convictions were based on fundamental business principles: What would a businessperson do in that situation? That’s the direction that he went.” Calcagno was an independent and at times controversial figure on the board. He was motivated to find the compromise position in politics, something that often cast him as an enemy of environmental interests, and sometimes as an enemy of development interests—or at least a tempering influence, advocating for a smaller development footprint. “He really cared—he never did this for money. He wanted to preserve the farmland,” says his daughter, Debbie Soares. Calcagno was involved in founding two nonprofit land trusts, the Elkhorn Slough Foundation and the Ag Land Trust. When he retired, he said: “I’ve still got plenty to do: a wife to take care of, a ranch to take care of, commercial property to take care of. I’m not going to be bored.” Soares confirms he was not bored and continued rising early every day to feed the cows. But regulators clamped down on manure storage on the dairy, ultimately leading Calcagno to sell his cows in recent months. (In 2019, he agreed to pay $33,479 in civil penalties for water quality violations. In April 2023, the Central Coast Regional Water Quality Control Board issued a notice of violation.) “When those cows went down the road in those trucks, it just broke his heart,” she says. “He just gave up. My mother believes he died of a broken heart.” Milk Made Lou Calcagno, a lifelong dairyman and longtime Monterey County supervisor, dies at 87. By Sara Rubin Lou Calcagno, shown at Moon Glow Dairy in 2022. A celebration of life takes place from 11am-4pm on Monday, Sept. 11 at the Salinas Elks Lodge. Calcagno will be buried at the Castroville Public Cemetery. NEWS “I left the community in better shape than before I was here.” DANIEL DREIFUSS OCT. 7 & 8, 2023 GET YOUR TICKETS NOW salinasairshow.com LET’S TURN & BURN
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