Galen Kusic, Editor

Over the past decade, the Solano County Board of Supervisors has featured a centenarian celebration among Solano residents. This year, one distinguished Benician, Peter Caggiano was honored along with 53 others, as he turns 100 on Dec. 26.

“Through Norma at the Benicia Senior Center, we’ve become friends,” said Supervisor Monica Brown. “She said Peter’s gonna be 100. My staff picked him up and he came with his girlfriend. I’m not even going to say which one because there’s apparently more than one and I don’t want to get in trouble.”

Caggiano was honored again at the Dec. 3 Benicia City Council meeting with a proclamation.

“This is very special,” said Mayor Elizabeth Patterson.

Caggiano was born in Long Island, NY in 1919. He served in the Army in the European Theater in WWII from 1943 to 1946. He worked on repairing P-47 airplanes in France and was only a few miles away from the Battle of the Bulge in the winter of 1944.

After retiring from United Airlines in 1979, he moved with his wife to St. Lucia, FL. where he began a new direction in his life – acting. He mostly worked behind the scenes building sets, but one day he was asked to play the role of the bartender in the play, “Fiddler on the Roof.”

“After that the acting bug was in his blood,” said Patterson.

He performed in Brigadoon, Guys and Dolls, Colombo and Fantasia. His favorite president is Andrew Jackson, who helped win the battle of New Orleans in 1812.

After moving to Benicia to be near one of his sons, he spent much of his time volunteering at the Benicia Historical Museum at the Camel Barns. He and his late wife have two sons and five grandchildren.

Caggiano received a standing ovation from the crowd on hand to witness him receive the proclamation.

“Is this for me? Boy, it’s been a wonderful time. I enjoy meeting people,” said Caggiano. “First of all, I’d like to thank each and every one of you. I’m just an ordinary guy from New York. I arrived out here in 2012 to start living a life out in Calif. Whoop dee-doo.”

Caggiano’s first volunteer job was down at the museum where he worked there as a groundskeeper and he loved it.

“At first they wanted me to be sitting there in the wait room,” he said. “I wanted something outdoor. I’m an outdoor person… It was wonderful. It was something for me to do.”

While Caggiano loved working there, he gave it up when he stopped driving at 95. He considered himself lucky to have only gotten in a couple fender benders through all the years and eventually turned in his license after seeing that Calif. drivers were “a little rough.”

Caggiano also loved riding the bus and seeing his favorite bus driver, Alan.

I met the most wonderful guy,” he said. “Terrific kid. I really loved that person.”

During the course of riding the bus, one day he never made it on. He fell backward and broke a hip. After recovering from hip surgery, he broke his other hip and landed back in the hospital. He thanks Alan for being there to help him.

“If it wasn’t for that Alan helping me on and off the bus, I would have just been at home,” he said.

Caggiano’s favorite thing about Benicia has been making friends.

“I love to make friends,” he said. “I’m out on the street whenever I can. I walk everyday with the thought, let me meet another friend. Sometimes it happens. Sometimes, nobody. But, I’m out there looking all the time. And in the course of 2012 to 2019, I’ve made a load of friends. And I appreciated every friend I met.”

At the conclusion of the proclamation, Caggiano led everyone in attendance to sing him happy birthday.

“He loves reading books about the presidents,” said Brown. “My father was a WWII vet and he’s been gone a couple years. To be able to honor somebody that did everything and has such a good sense of humor – that’s what we can do to honor everybody. We do these things because it makes us a better community.”