Sgt. Charles Taliano: The face of a 'Marine's Marine'

On a warm April day in 1968, a new platoon was organizing in the squad bay at Marine Corps Recruit Depot Parris Island.

Sgt. Charles Taliano, a drill instructor charged with molding men into Marines, stood inches from a recruit's face -- snarling.

His jaw clenched and jutted forward.

His neck vein bulged and his blue eyes bore into the young man, whom Taliano for some reason had found wanting.

Maybe he was "eyeballing the area or needed to stand up straight, something like that," Taliano later said. "I was just having a conversation with him."

A reservist writing a book about boot camp happened to be on the depot that day and snapped a picture of the "conversation."

The Marine Corps chose the photo for its upcoming recruitment campaign. For much of the '70s and '80s, thousands of posters of Taliano's unsmiling mug circulated around the country with the headline, "We don't promise you a rose garden," a reference to a 1970 country/pop chart-topper.

Photo stills from the conversation were incorporated into a 1973 TV commercial promoting the Marines -- an attempt to bolster recruitment amid flagging public support for the Vietnam War.

Suddenly, Sgt. "Chuck" Taliano was one of the most recognizable faces in the Marine Corps, earning him the nickname the Rose Garden D.I.

"People would tell him, 'If it wasn't for that poster, I would not have joined the Marines,'" said Sgt. Major David Robles, a Beaufort resident and friend of Taliano's.

Taliano never profited from the campaign financially. As far as he was concerned, the photo was a fluke -- something that could have happened to any drill instructor in the squad bay that day.

One thing he was never able to do was to locate the recruit at whom he was yelling.

In a 2007 book about drill instructors called "The Few and The Proud" by Larry Smith, Taliano said it might be better not knowing.

"I'm married to that man for life, and I don't want to know that he's dead, wounded or maimed," he said.

Taliano became a drill instructor two years after enlisting in 1964. It was a stressful job for someone barely of college age. Taliano was only 21 years old with recruits older than he was.

But he did his job well, turning boys into fighting machines.

Former recruits send him letters, confessing they never would have survived combat if it hadn't been for his training.

"He could be hard core and bark at them, but he still took them into consideration and treated them as human beings," his sister Michaelene Taliano said. She found stacks of letters from recruits in Taliano's home after he died in 2010 from multiple myeloma, a cancer of plasma cells. He was 65.

And Taliano loved the Marines he helped create.

"Being a D.I., other than being a father, was the most rewarding thing in my life," Taliano said in "The Few and The Proud."

After finishing active duty, Taliano worked in book publishing for 30 years, mostly in New York.

When he retired, he returned to Beaufort.

Looking for something to do, Taliano was persuaded by his friend David Robles to run the gift shop at Parris Island.

He made $10,000 his first day running the shop, Robles said.

Taliano himself was the big draw since the gift shop sold copies of the "Rose Garden" poster that Taliano autographed for anyone who asked.

He kept sales strong for years to come.

While his fame may have gotten people in the door, Taliano kept the store so well stocked with Marine tchotchkes that customers usually left with armfuls of other merchandise, too.

Over the years, Taliano traveled to other Marine bases and attended Marine functions. He would inevitably get wrangled into signing posters.

Once, at a Marine Corps Ball in Philadelphia, the event's speaker pointed Taliano out from on stage. Almost instantly, a line formed out the door for his autograph, recalled his son, Michael Taliano.

"He was signing posters until after 11 p.m.," Michael Taliano said.

Autograph seekers were mostly old-school military guys who saw the poster when they were coming up in the '70s and '80s.

But time has taken some of the shine off Taliano's brand.

"It's sad now because a lot of these kids don't know who he was because they haven't seen the poster," Robles said. Even during Taliano's lifetime, some recruits would buy the poster at the gift shop without realizing the man in it was the one counting their change.

Kevin Jandreau of Springfield, Mass. has made it his mission to keep Taliano's memory alive. Jandreau befriended Taliano during years of escorting young Marines to boot camp and making a point to stop in the gift shop.

He created an "In Memoriam" Facebook page for Taliano.

Jandreau also requires the Young Westover Marines, a youth group he works with, to buy the poster whenever they're at Parris Island.

Jandreau has his own autographed poster framed and hanging in his living room.

"Sgt. T", as he was affectionately called, may have looked menacing on the poster, Jandreau said, but "he was a man with a great heart."

Even if you didn't know he was a former drill instructor, it showed, said son Michael, who described his dad as a polite yet strict man who demanded direct eye contact and firm handshakes.

The saying "Once a Marine, always a Marine" was definitely true of Sgt. T, Michael Taliano said.

"He was a Marine's Marine."

And in the end, Taliano actually got a rose garden.

The wives of 2nd Recruit Training Battalion at Parris Island, the battalion for which Taliano had been a drill instructor, built a brick garden in front of the battalion headquarters and planted yellow roses for him.

The Rose Garden D.I. saw them bloom before he died.

This story was originally published May 20, 2014 at 3:11 PM with the headline "Sgt. Charles Taliano: The face of a 'Marine's Marine'."