About Gary
Entrepreneur, born Gary Lee Boyer on September 13th, 1956 , in Circleville, Ohio. My family moved to Lancaster, Ohio when I was 3 years old, and this is where I grew up. My parent’s owned a family restaurant, which was my father’s passion, but he passed away when I was 5 years old. My mother kept the business running, later remarried and her husband took over running the restaurant. At the young age of 18, I opened my first Boyer’s Restaurant, got married to Kathy Gillooly and was the first 18 year old to purchase a home in the state of Ohio.
After going through the process of buying my home, I started my interest in Real Estate. In order to start investing in Real Estate, I got my Real Estate License in Ohio in 1977. Fortunately for me and my family, we moved to California in 1978 after the winter blizzard winter of 1977 that virtually shut down.
We stayed with my Aunt in Anaheim when we first moved to California and I got a management job in restaurant business right away and Kathy worked at Disneyland. At this time we had one child, Travis. Still interested in pursuing in the real estate field, we both took the exam and passed, and Kathy got a job in the mortgage business, and I got into paper goods sales.
We never thought we would ever be able to own a home in California due to the high prices, but an opportunity arose and they told us the home is in Glendora. We had no idea where Glendora even was at that time. So we packed our bags and moved to Glendora in 1981, with our new baby son, Daniel, along with Travis and immediately became involved in the community. I started coaching and was appointed on the Board of the Glendora National Little League, as being involved with helping children was a passion for me and I noticed how much the parents in Glendora were so supportive of their kids and the community.
I continued to coach and volunteer in youth sports, I got involved with Sue Bauer, as a member of the Mayor’s Youth Committee. Glendora had a strong Community Services System in place for seniors, but there was not a lot available for kids to do outside of school and sports. The Mayor’s Youth Committee was the initial committee pushing for youth improvements as the City eventually approved the Skate Park at Finkbiner, the addition of Ole Hammer Park, the Expansion of Louie Pompei Sports Park, South Hills Park and the construction of the Timothy Crowler Teen and Family Center. My kids continued to be involved and playing sports and I became President of the Glendora Youth Basketball and continued as President for almost 20 years.
After a long career in Food Service sales that gave me the flexibility to volunteer in town, I made a career change into Real Estate in 1998 which gave me the opportunity to finally work close to home and could spend more time volunteering in the community. Working in the Village, I immediately became involved in all of the events that take place in the downtown Village. The Farmers Market and other events were in full swing and all running smoothly, and my family and I would sponsor and work as many events as we were able.
The special thing about moving into Real estate as a career is that has made it possible for me to concentrate my business efforts locally in a community that I love and gives me the opportunity to be close to my sons and grand kids, Travis, Karrie & Jacob and Daniel, Lori, Tessa & Derek.
Without notice, the Thursday Night Farmers Market stopped. As we inquired as to what happened, we discovered that the City made a decision to shut it down because they were receiving so much negative reaction from Village Business Owners. Most of us were dumbfounded as we tried to find out why this happened when we discovered that there were 3 disgruntled Business Owners who went to meetings, spoke up and succeeded in getting the Farmers Market shut down. It was very obvious that there was definitely a lot of support for the Farmers Market, but those of us who were supportive didn’t speak up. The businesses got together to make sure that didn’t happen again. I then became involved with the Village Business Association, and we were trying to understand the process of creating a Business Improvement District. This was an important step forward for the Village and I was appointed chairperson of the Committee to create the BID. It took about 5 years and a lot of money to investigate the process, get the support of the businesses, and the support from the City to make this move. In 2008 the project was presented to the City and it took about a year before we were finally able to get the full approval for the BID and get it in place.
I learned a lot about the political process and working through the myriad of regulations and restrictions in place that make it difficult for the average citizen to become involved in the governmental process after getting the BID in place. The procedures of getting the BID up and running, being a Realtor and working with the City just trying to help our clients, it became obvious that there is a problem with the system.
That has brought me to the realization that the only way to understand the procedures of government is to get involved and become part of it and try to do my best to figure out a way to make a difference in our community. My hope is to be able to try and bring some common sense to City decisions. Make sure that everyone’s voices are heard and no one is ignored. The average citizen needs to be treated the same as a large corporation or developer. Most importantly, I think it’s important for all of the facts to be presented openly so that issues can be understood and evaluated prior to decisions being made.