‘I wanted to relive it’: Volunteering brings back memories of 1956 Olympics for veteran

Retired Army Lt. Col. Mario Gargiulo sits at his desk at the AFSOUTH headquarters in 1972 in Naples, Italy. The now 90-year-old was the oldest volunteer at the 2026 Winter Olympics closing ceremony. (Submitted by Mario Gargiulo)

Retired Army Lt. Col. Mario Gargiulo saw a chance for his life to come full circle when he applied to be a volunteer for the 2026 Milan Cortina Games.

Born in Naples, Italy, in 1936, he traveled 539 miles north to watch the 1956 Winter Olympic Games in Cortina, Italy, an experience that left such a mark on him that he took his wife, Norma, an American, there as part of their honeymoon in 1959.

“1956 was the first thing of any real meaning that I went to see on my own,” Gargiulo said. “I was excited to see all the flags and people from different nationalities. It was quite an experience.

“Now, in a way, I wanted to relive it.”

Gargiulo wasn’t selected to go back to Cortina, but he played a role closer to his home in Verona, a city 95 miles to the southeast.

The 90-year-old volunteered for the closing ceremony held at Teatro Romano on Feb. 22, marking the end of the 2026 Games.

Retired Army Lt. Col. Mario Gargiulo stands by the Olympic rings outside of Teatro Romano in Verona, Italy, in February. (Submitted by Mario Gargiulo)

Gargiulo has plenty of connections to the ancient Roman amphitheater that dates back to A.D. 30.

In the early 1980s, he was assigned as an aide-de-camp to the commander of land forces in Southern Europe, an Italian four-star general. Gargiulo took numerous generals and officers, mostly American, to see the opera and meet the shows’ stars.

His daughter, Jennifer, also performed onstage. She was part of a ballet company in the city from the ages of 9 to 12 and danced in “Don Chisciotte” with Rudolf Nureyev, a Soviet-born ballet dancer who was one of the most prominent dancers of his time. And she danced in “La Gioconda” and in “Aida” for four seasons.

“My feelings are overwhelming because I know the arena very well,” Gargiulo said.

Verona also is the location of one of the most memorable times of his service in the U.S. Army.

Earlier in life, Gargiulo enrolled in the Italian air force academy, only to drop out due to his father’s death.

In 1967, living in New York, Gargiulo enlisted in the U.S. Army, and he became a captain in 1970. His career took him to Europe multiple times, the Carolinas and Camp Casey in South Korea.

Retired Army Lt. Col. Mario Gargiulo honeymooned with his wife Norma in Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy in 1959. Gargiulo went as a spectator when the Italian city last hosted the Winter Olympics in 1956. (Provided by Mario Gargiulo)

In 1981, he found himself on the outskirts of a major international incident. On Dec. 17, 1981, then-Brig. Gen. James Dozier was kidnapped from his apartment in Verona by the Red Brigades, an ultra-leftist Italian terrorist organization.

Dozier was held hostage for 42 days before Italian elite police units rescued him in the city of Padua on Jan. 28, 1982.

During that time, Gargiulo acted as a link between LANDSOUTH and Italian security forces. Once Dozier had been released, he traveled back with him to the U.S. on orders from the Italian general under whom he served.

Gargiulo stayed with Dozier when he returned to Italy to finish his assignment and Norma was the translator at the trial of Dozier’s kidnappers.

“We’re still in touch,” Gargiulo said. “I just came back from New York maybe three weeks ago, and I gave him a call. We really are very friendly now.”

Yet Gargiulo’s favorite assignment combined his service with his passion: languages.

He received a degree in Slavic languages and literature from the Istituto Universitario Orientale in Naples, where he learned Russian and Bulgarian.

Retired Army Lt. Col. Mario Gargiulo poses for a photo with Colin Powell, then chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, during a tour of the Pentagon in April 1991. (Submitted by Mario Gargiulo)

The lieutenant colonel commanded the U.S. Army Foreign Language Training Center Europe from July 18, 1991, to Sept. 30, 1993, when he became a division chief as the program was integrated into the Marshall Center in October 1993.

After retiring from the Army in June 1994, Gargiulo worked for 12 years as an interpreter/inspector for the Defense Threat Reduction Agency in Votkinsk, Russia, as part of the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty.

Gargiulo settled in Verona, where he lives on his own after his wife’s death in 2020.

Leading up to the ceremony, he didn’t know exactly what the organizers had in store for him, just that they asked if he had any issues with being onstage.

That eclipses going back to Cortina, where he was unprepared for the weather and slept in an unheated apartment 60 years ago.

“As much as I would have loved to go on the slopes in Cortina and see some of the competition, I must say that I’m also very happy to be here in Verona in that ceremony, which will be something I’ve never seen,” Gargiulo said. “It’s something which is larger than one person.”

Army Lt. Col. Mario Gargiulo, left, helps Brig. Gen. James L. Dozier, right, put a gift necklace around Dozier’s wife Judith’s neck in a photo that ran on the front page of The Washington Post on Jan. 30, 1982. (Submitted by Mario Gargiulo)