In May, the Veterans Honoring Veterans (VHV) founder and president Bart Bartholomew (a Navy veteran) and his staff presented their major milestone of 1,000th veteran statue award at the PAMVETS breakfast club at the Golden Corral Restaurant in Loveland. In June, Bart and 50 Plus News visited the 1,000th award winner Navy Seal veteran Gil Espinoza to reveal his past Navy service and career with the Boulder Fire Department. Gil’s story is both heartwarming, inspiring, and overcoming challenges in his life!
VHV Founder Bart Bartholomew Presents 1000th Statue Award to Navy Seal Gil Espinoza
Incidentally, Bart and his VHV staff have been providing the military statues to the many veterans in Northern Colorado and Southern Wyoming since 2018. Gary Ricker with Designs by Ricker provides the military statues for VHV!
During high school, Gil won the Colorado state championship twice in wrestling. After graduating from Boulder High School, Gil’s wrestling coach was an Underwater Demolition Team member in the Navy and recommended Gil to become a frogman.
Gil joined the Navy to become a frogman. Back then, there were only two active seal teams, so the selection process was very intense and limited during the nine-month training program. About 20% of the Navy seal candidates actually become a frogman.
Gil’s father encouraged him to represent the family name be the best he could be, no matter what the obstacles were!
Being part of Seal class #41, Gil remembered being asked by his training instructor, “What is the temperature of the ocean?” The answer is it didn’t matter! Gil almost didn’t graduate from the program. He and 20 others were accused of failing a training evolution. He and five of his teammates made a request to the commanding officer (CO) to be reconsidered to finish their Seal training. The CO expressed a condition, “If anyone of you quit or gets hurt, all of you would be out of the program.” The five candidates agreed to the condition and continued their training with the next Seal training class. They finally graduated as part of Seal class #42.
Gil served in Seal Team One for 4 years and was deployed in Vietnam for 8 months. He and his Navy Seal teammates endured some challenging times during their warfare in Vietnam! Gil finished his Navy career as a Petty Officer 4 and received the purple heart from his wounds in Vietnam.
After leaving the Navy, Gil Received a wrestling scholarship with CU Boulder and graduated in 1975. He decided he wanted to try something different and heard the Boulder Fire Department was hiring and saw that as a challenge. Ever since he was in the first grade, Gil dreamed of being a firefighter. He joined the Boulder Fire Department for 37 years. As Gil remembered being hired by the Boulder FD, his team leader said do as I tell you and you’ll be OK! Gil felt the training with the Boulder FD was minimal compared to his Navy Seal training program.
With his former Navy background and skills, Gil eventually became the Battalion Chief (BC) for 21 years before retiring. As the BC, he started a new training program as he had learned from his Navy service. As a BC, he felt the new training program would make his team more proficient and cohesive as firefighters. Gil explained, “The true gauge of a leader is they are willing to train their people to eventually take over his job.”
I know Gil’s’ father would be very proud of his service in the Navy and as a firefighter too! Congratulations to Gil for being the 1,000th recipient of the veteran’s statue program and for his service in the Navy! Article and photo courtesy of Bob Larson.