Tony Garafalo

Town hall in Oolitic, Ind., (pop. 1,446) is filled with official looking signs, but one stands out. Hanging on an office door at the end of the hall is a sign that reads “Tony’s Room.” Another note stuck on the door lets people know when “Tony is Out.”

Although Tony Garafalo, 78, is not officially a town employee, he’s had an office in town hall and been doing chores for people in the central Indiana town for decades. Tony—as everyone knows him by—sets no pay rate for the work he does; he just tells folks to pay him what they consider “fair.”

“The town has sort of adopted him,” says Pauline Rowe, the town’s clerk-treasurer. “Tony is a very special man to all of us around here.”

The son of Italian immigrants, Tony was born in 1922 with a speech impediment caused by a cleft palate, a congenital condition that couldn’t be surgically corrected back then.

“They didn’t know how to do things like that years ago,” says his sister, Mary Frances Mosier, 75. “He can’t talk too well, so they thought he couldn’t learn. He never did learn how to read.”

School officials passed Tony from one grade to another until he reached the fourth grade. Then, one day, Tony was told to “go home, boy,” and that’s what he did.

As soon as he was old enough, though, Tony began doing chores around town. No matter the weather, Tony would be out and about, delivering mail to local businesses, emptying trash cans in town hall, stocking grocery store shelves, or running errands for anyone who needed them done.

“There’s never been a lazy bone in that guy’s body. He’s a dandy,” says Robert Sharr, who was in the second grade with Tony. “He can’t read a lick, but he carries his Bible because he wants everybody to know whose side he is on.”

When Sharr bought a small grocery store in downtown Oolitic in 1954, Tony was right there to help. “Back then we got a lot of pop bottles returned for the deposits you used to have to pay. Tony was known as the Pop Bottle King. He’d take a whole big grocery cart of those bottles and sort them out back into the empty cases.”

When Tony’s mother died in 1959, he went to live a few miles down the road in Bedford, Ind., (pop. 14,982) with his sister. But every day (except Sunday when he attends morning and evening church services), Tony’s sister brings him back to the town that he loves. Tony makes his rounds, eats lunch in his town hall office, and catches a ride back to his sister’s at the end of the day.

In the early 1970s, while Sharr was serving on the town board, Tony was given his own room in town hall so he would have a place to rest between jobs and to call his own.

Although he has since retired, Sharr says he makes it a point to catch up with Tony nearly every day. “He makes people in town feel good,” says Sharr, 74. “Every day I give him a hug and it makes my day brighter.”

Inside Tony’s office, a television, coffeepot, collection of ball caps, circle of folding chairs, and a big stack of Bibles are neatly arranged in the comfortable room. A writing desk is decorated with notes from Tony’s friends, as well as some more Bibles.

Opening a big closet, Tony points out even more Bibles given to him by townspeople over the years. He and “the Man Upstairs” are on very friendly terms, Tony manages to convey with a grin.

And where is Tony happiest? Without hesitation, he runs his hand over his heart and glances around at the streets of Oolitic. “Here,” he says, a big smile lighting his face.

For Tony, Oolitic is the center of the universe. And for folks who live in Oolitic?

“I think the good Lord knew where to put Tony,” Sharr says. “Tony’s got a gift for being happy and making others happy. He’s an important part of the heart of this town.”

Jackie Sheckler Finch is a freelance writer in Bloomington, Ind.

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