I’ll never forget the afternoon I spent in 2017 with Tony Galvez in the back yard of the home he shared with his parents on Union Street in Aurora.
I’d had a crummy week that included a cellphone which decided to stop working. And Tony had been through a challenging period, as well – only what he faced made my look like a first-class piker.
The young man, 29 at the time, had been in and out of the hospital five times battling kidney stones, which was yet another cruel byproduct of the disease he’d been living with for more than 20 years. At age 6, Tony was diagnosed with Duchenne, a fatal form of muscular dystrophy that quickly led to reliance on a wheelchair, as well as feeding tubes and an oxygen mask to keep him alive.
Pain was also his constant companion. Lots of pain. Yet Tony always insisted, “God gave me this disease for a reason. I want people to see that my disability has not stopped me and it doesn’t have to stop others.”
Tony did just that in 2015 by creating SAN Antonio Foundation, which over the years, according to friends and family, has raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for kids fighting cancer and other life-altering diseases.
After surviving so many health scares of his own, an apparent heart attack took Jose Antonio “Tony” Galvez’s life March 5, a few weeks shy of his 38th birthday. It’s a loss that has left a huge hole in the hearts of his many friends and his family, including parents Ramon and Antonia and five siblings.
But this community has lost a champion as well.
Instead of feeling sorry for the challenges and the suffering he faced day in and day out, Tony looked at Duchenne as “a blessing” because it turned him into such a passionate advocate for others. “Muscular dystrophy can weaken me physically. But emotionally and spiritually it has made me strong,” he told me in that back yard interview. “I am a happy person.”
And just being around him made others happy. It was such a privilege getting to interview him numerous times over the last decade, including after he was named grand marshal of Aurora’s 2017 Fourth of July parade and during a Fiestas Patrias concert at RiverEdge Park, when he joined the three-time Grammy-nominated band Los Rieleros Del Norte on stage.
Meeting this popular musical group had “been a lifelong dream of mine,” Tony told me at the time. And he was definitely star-struck upon his introduction to the concert’s headliner. But there’s no question it was the band members who walked away in awe after talking to Tony and learning about what he represented.
That’s the impact he had on everyone he met.
“He was so inspirational … (it was) his demeanor, his upbeat way of looking at life, especially with the conditions he was under,” noted Aurora Deputy Mayor Casildo “Casey” Cuevas, who became close to Tony and his family after they were introduced over 15 years ago and helped the young man “who became like my little brother” pull together the foundation, as well as its many fundraisers.
“At first you want to feel sorry for him, but after you get to know him, you have nothing but admiration,” said Cuevas. “There are not enough words to say how proud I am of his work.”
And that work was not easy for Tony, who had such limited mobility he could use little more than his thumbs to conduct business for the foundation from a specially-designed computer. But Tony never let his condition define him or confine him. While he would struggle with depression after his many hospital stays, “he always came out of it,” said brother Juan Galvez, and was a joyous presence at those fundraisers, which often centered around the young man’s love for music, as well as dance and great Mexican food.
Tony also traveled on behalf of the foundation, including a road trip to Memphis to present St. Jude Children’s Hospital with a check for $5,000, and a Miami excursion to Teleton USA, where he wanted to take a group of kids with muscular dystrophy to the ocean so they could experience it for the first time.
Cuevas, who accompanied the Galvez family on that 2014 Florida trip and helped rent the van to give those half-dozen children an unforgettable day at the beach, was trying to figure out a way to celebrate his friend’s upcoming birthday when word came Tony had died.
His brother had been in the hospital with pneumonia about six weeks ago, and when he was released, “I started noticing a change,” said Juan. “He did not get out of his depression and was Googling his condition more. … I felt like he knew something was going to happen but he did not want to worry anyone else.”
When Tony was diagnosed with Duchenne, the average life span for this disease was 18 years. Advances in medicine, however, raised it to the 30s and beyond. Like most of us, Tony had no idea how many years he had left but was determined to use every one to raise as much money for others as he could.
“If I let pain overtake me,” he told me in that back yard interview, “then I’d be letting down my foundation and the people involved in it and those who benefit from it. And that is not an option.”
Over 100 comments on the SAN Antonio Foundation Facebook page — with more on the city of Aurora’s – offer a glimpse into how many people were touched by the extraordinary life of Tony Galvez. But his legacy will live on: The family is determined to keep the foundation going, says Juan, who experienced first-hand the benefits of his brother’s compassionate determination when his 3-year-old daughter was diagnosed with stage four cancer six years ago and Tony went to work raising $15,000 so “we could keep our home.”
While Cuevas won’t be able to surprise his good friend on his birthday with a Mariachi band as he’d hoped, March 26 will be named Tony Galvez Day by the city of Aurora, he told me, and encourages donations to the SAN Antonio Foundation in the founder’s memory. The community can also pay its respects from 3-7 p.m. March 13 at Dieterle Memorial Home in Montgomery, with a funeral Mass at St. Nicholas Catholic Church in Aurora at 11 a.m. the following day.
“The memories will get us through” as will “the missions he accomplished,” said Juan of his younger brother.
“If others said it was impossible, he would prove them wrong. The sky was the limit for him.”
dcrosby@tribpub.com
