Patriarch of Garden Lakes’ first family celebrates 100th year
♦ Gigi Deangelus still goes to work out three times a week at a local gym.
It was close to 70 years ago when Louis “Gigi” Deangelus returned home from the Marine Corps and learned that his job with General Electric had been transferred from Pittsfield, Massachusetts to Rome.
Deangelus, who is celebrating his 100th birthday today, remembers getting the news almost like it was yesterday.
His wife Helen was not quite as excited about the move because she didn’t think she’d be able to communicate with Southerners who spoke so differently.
But the family made a fourday drive to Rome and the Deangelus family became the first residents of the brand new Garden Lakes community. He’s lived in the same house, one of the first four constructed on Garden Lakes Boulevard, for 67 years.
As one might well imagine, Deangelus is the only one of the original settlers to still live in Garden Lakes.
Deangelus worked for General Electric for 45 years and retired there in 1984, not long before a lot of the work from the medium transformer plant relocated to Mexico.
Garden Lakes was at one time the largest privately owned subdivision in the state and many of its original inhabitants worked at the GE plant. His son, Ronnie Deangelus, said that about 80% of the charter members of the Garden Lakes Baptist Church worked at GE.
Back then, Garden Lakes Boulevard was a dirt road and he remembers his wife losing a boot in the mud while they were first looking at homes.
It was the perfect location for the Deangelus family, which back in those days only had one car.
“I could walk to work,” Gigi recalled. “It took about ten minutes.”
He couldn’t afford to make a case for the car during the day but he needed it at night to drive to wherever a baseball or basketball game he was assigned to officiate was being played.
Officiating youth sports, whether basketball or baseball has been a lifelong passion for Deangelus.
He actually was a better baseball player but pretty much gave it up as a player after Hall of Fame Manager Casey Stengel told him he was too short.
He started calling basketball games in while he was in high school in the 1930’s, getting $0.20 an hour. “We needed the money,” Deangelus said. He was one of 11 children in his family, eight boys and three girls.
When Gigi retired from officiating games n 1980, he took on a supervisory role selecting referees to call not only local high school games but a lot of college games all over the Southeast.
Over the years, Deangelus believes he has officiated well over 3,000 basketball games and is a member of the Rome Floyd Sports Hall of Fame in 1975 in the Meritorious Service category related to his career as a referee.
He has also been honored at the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame and the International Association of Approved Basketball Officials.
In addition to his work as a trainer/ specialist at GE, and his moonlighting as a sports official, Deangelus was an accomplished welder. He welded the bleachers at the old Coosa High School and the original bleachers at the Boys and Girls Club on Gadson Street in West Rome.
He also played the role of Santa Claus for the Garden Lakes and Coosa communities for more than 30 years.
For the last 40 years, Deangelus has played a lot of golf. Bad knees made him give that up about ten years ago. Now you can find Gigi on an exercise bike at Planet Fitness in the Gala shopping center three days a week.