My mother always wanted me to get a job with a suit and tie.

John Gallarza has worked his way up to branch manager of the TransWorld Bank in Pacoima, and he continues taking classes toward a bachelors degree. In his success he remembers the struggle and influence of his father and mother. Gallarza, 36, his wife, Marlene, and their baby daughter, Nicole, live in Panorama City.

My dad is my own personal hero. I tower over him now. He’s 5-8 and I’m 6-1. But in my eyes I still picture him from when I was a little kid.

During World War II he served in the 3rd Army under Patton, and he was one of the Rangers that was sent in to find the 101st Airborne Division at Bastogne. He was wounded there by a German machine gun in the church steeple.

The squad that was with him took off running. Just one guy, his buddy, who was also Latino, stayed with him and buried him in the snow. All of a sudden, he sees this motorcycle with a sidecar. Two German soldiers were looking for him with bayonets. My dad thought, “Jesus, this is it.” Right then our tanks broke through the trees.

He spent a year in a body cast. They wanted to amputate his leg, but he said: “No, I’m not going do that. I want my leg.” They said, “Well it’s gonna be hell.”

It’s amazing to me--he went through all that, came back from the war, was in uniform and on crutches, and he went into a bar and they wouldn’t serve him. He’d go into places, and the signs would say, “No dogs or Mexicans allowed.”

Both of my parents had a very tough life. Back in those days there was a lot more racism, redlining, things like that. But neither of them were ever bitter about it. He always had the ambition to overcome that.

My dad did not want to go back and work in the fields, so he started his own landscape gardening business. They struggled to make life better for my sister and me. They got away from the barrio and moved to Sun Valley because the schools were better.

My mother always wanted me to get a job with a suit and tie. White-collar--it was my mother’s dream because all her life my grandparents had come home dirty. It’s amazing how much your mother can influence you and how much making them both proud of you can give you motivation.

In the mid-’60s my mother contracted cancer. I was only about 13, 14 when they operated on her. They took three-fourths of her stomach out at that time. They said if she goes five years, without recurrence, it’s a good chance it’s not going to come back. Well, about seven years later it came back.

I wanted to be a civil engineer, so I was going to Valley College, but when my mom got sick again I had to drop out because of the chemotherapy. My dad was self-employed. Being a gardener, he couldn’t let the route go to pot. I was still home, so I had to help them. I’d drive her to USC Medical Center every day. We’d come in at 10, and she wouldn’t get the shot till 3 in the afternoon.

She had six major surgeries. She really suffered. She weighed 54 pounds when she finally died. But all through it, when we were around she was always strong. She wouldn’t cry in front of us. This whole situation stretched out for five years. And finally my mother said, “Look, you got to start doing something with your life.” She told all of us, “Unfortunately, I’m going to have to die for the rest of you to start living again.”

I really didn’t know what to do, because I was 23 years old, and I could feel the clock running, and I didn’t have any money. My sister who was in banking, told me, “You should get into banking, because it’s one of the few professions that you can get into, and if you apply yourself, you can work your way up through the system.”

So I hit every single bank on Van Nuys Boulevard and Ventura Boulevard, and I started going to school in the evenings. I was hired here in 1976.

Boy, was my mother excited when I wore that white shirt and that tie the first day I went in to work!