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DuPage County judge remembered as advocate for children

As a longtime DuPage County judge, it would be nearly impossible for Michael R. Galasso to please everyone who appeared before him in court. Yet friends and family say he seemingly managed to do just that with his caring and relatable demeanor.

"People would say 'Galasso? Is your dad the judge?' and I never once had to worry about saying 'Yes, he's my dad,'" daughter Kristen Pellicane of Algonquin said. "People would say, 'Oh, what a wonderful guy!' "I'm sure he didn't make everybody happy in front of him, but to make the majority happy doing what he did is pretty amazing."

Galasso, of Elgin, died Friday at age 78 after a brief battle with cancer.

"He was that guy," said Tim Daw, who worked with Galasso for the last 15 years at the firm Schiller DuCanto & Fleck. "He was a go-to guy if you needed something in DuPage County. Yet he never talked about what he did.

"He did everything: He was a lawyer. He was a practitioner, an associate judge, an appellate judge. And he was probably one of the most humble people ever. He had a great deal of humility."

Galasso graduated from Chicago-Kent College of Law in 1961 and spent 23 years representing family law cases in DuPage County. He was appointed associate judge in 1984. In 1999, he was appointed to the second district of the Illinois Appellate Court. Upon retiring in 2000, he joined the firm of Schiller DuCanto & Fleck in Wheaton.

As a chief presenting judge, Daw said, Galasso saw a need to help children who appeared in abuse and neglect court. Galasso pushed to bring court appointed special advocates to DuPage County 20-plus years ago.

"With the state on one side and the parents on the other side, nobody was really in the position to talk about what does this child need to get through the system? How can we best do that?," Daw said. "Now, with CASA, every child in the system has an advocate who is willing to serve them and stay in it for the long haul. Some have been in the lives of these kids for decades."

Most recently, Galasso was honored as one of Kent's top 125 most distinguished graduates, Pellicane said.

While so many in DuPage County remember Galasso from his involvement in the courts, his children remember their active childhood - trips snowmobiling and times spent at their lake house - and when their father taught them to play tennis and how to ski.

He loved to golf and participate in his grandchildren's activities, as well as travel - with recent trips to Alaska and Paris with his fiancee, Sara Spitz.

When Galasso learned he had cancer just three weeks ago, daughter Kristen said, hospice was brought in to explain his options.

"He said, 'I've had a wonderful life. I'm good with it,'" Kristen said. "He didn't want to go yet, but he was OK with it because he had such a great life. So that's what I'll remember: his spirit and his sense of adventure."

In addition to daughter Kristen, Galasso is survived by daughter Keri, son Mark, 10 grandchildren, and his fiancee. He's proceeded in death by his wife, Joyce. Services will be from 3 to 9 p.m. Thursday at Salerno's Rosedale Chapel, 450 W. Lake St., Roselle. A celebration of life ceremony begins at 7 p.m. Thursday.

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