Bumpy Road Into Spring; Turn It Off for a While; Horizontal Internet; MBTA Weekend Commuter Service Saved; Rockefeller Review; Prettiest Campus?
“Yes, one of the brightest gems in the New England weather is the dazzling uncertainty of it. There is only one thing certain about it, you are certain there is going to be plenty of weather.”
-- Mark Twain, who lived many years in Connecticut but it was said that his favorite place was Dublin, N.H., New England’s highest town.
And so we go into another spring, up and down weatherwise but trending the right way. First the flowers that can take freezing and thawing and refreezing – the crocuses and the snowdrops. Then the somewhat less hardy daffodils and the tulips.
It will be “Mud Time’’ for a few weeks in New England’s north country. And, of course, it’s pothole season!
A lot of folks are so impatient for spring that they strip down to shorts and T-shirts and wander around outside when it’s still in the forties, in a triumph of hope over experience.
Plant the radishes first!
The buds on the trees swell and then seem to almost explode on one afternoon in late April or early May—that is, except right along the coast, where the cold water delays the season as the warmed-up water delays winter late in the year. As visitors to Fenway Park know “Boston’s famous east wind’’ can drive down the temperature of a mid-April day by 20 degrees in 15 minutes.
Then comes that hot, humid day in late May or early June when the lushness is almost tropical. In New Hampshire when I lived there, it sometimes seemed as if winter ended one day and summer started the next.
Spring seems at once the real start of the year, at least of the natural year, as well as its ending, a feeling that for most people goes back to their memories of the school year’s approaching end.
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The proliferation of hotel projects in Providence looks like an unexpectedly enthusiastic show of confidence in the future of the city.
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I’m pretty sure that there has rarely, if ever, been such political frenzy in America as the reaction to President Trump, most of it anti but some of its fanatically pro. The rage rolls into social media and won’t quit. But most of the fulminations are in echo chambers and a waste of time. Trump foes (many of whom didn’t vote last November and are now surprised by what they’re getting) especially waste a lot of energy on Facebook expressing their anger amongst themselves.
That anger is partly from feeling powerless. They can address that by participating in local politics either as candidates or as supporters of candidates. That should mean that they cough up a few dollars to send to their favorite party or candidates. Take action, don’t just look at the news.
State legislative seats are particularly important because state legislators do the redistricting of congressional districts, aka gerrymandering.
Of course, getting citizens involved in local civic and political activities is tougher than it used to be, in part because media pull people into affinity interest groups that aren’t grounded in geography. Some media also undermine American society by focusing almost entirely on negative news and conspiracy theories. The biggest culprits are cable TV and social media. They tend to treat as many stories as possible as scandals or potential scandals, brewing cynicism, lack of trust in such essential institutions as government and professional journalism and discouraging participatory citizenship, including voting. It becomes a vicious circle.
We need to grit our teeth and become more active citizens again, out of enlightened self-interest, if nothing else. It does matter who gets elected. And ‘’they’’ aren’t all crooks.
Reduce stress by limiting your time following the hijinks in Washington. Just read the news once a day, and push aside the obsessive-compulsive drive to look for the latest outrageous news bulletin every 10 minutes. The added time for reflection will let you understand more of what’s going on and what to do about it.
The Internet is undermining our capacity for developed thought, connections with family and real friends (not Facebook-style ones) and our privacy in the addiction to the rush produced by looking at screens.
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Meanwhile, Michael Andor Brodeur, writing in The Boston Globe, suggests we’d all feel better if there was less “verticality’’ on social media, which tends to drag us down, down, down in triviality. He writes in “How toppling the timeline is changing the Internet’’ (March 3):
“From the earliest bulletin boards and forums to the first frontiers of the blogosphere, the standard-setting timelines of Facebook and Twitter, and the non-coincidentally named ‘verticals’ of digital publishing, the necessity to scroll down to catch up — or more generally, the predicament of reverse chronology — is a fundamental flaw of our online experience.
“We spend hours each day diving over and over again into the unfathomable depths of the recent past, snatching up whatever we can until we’re gasping for the fresh air of the present, clicking to refresh, and preparing for yet another dive into the vastness of whatever we just missed.
“The exercise of online life often feels like treading water to stay afloat in a lake with no floor and no shore. It’s exhausting. Overwhelming. Intrinsically hopeless.’’
So, he writes, a partial solution to this Internet ennui is running things horizontally.
‘’{M}ore and more, I’m seeing apps and mobile platforms pushing things in different directions — to the left and right, specifically. There seems to be a (figurative) elevation of the horizontal underway (and it goes beyond the new language of approval taught to us by Tinder swipes).’’
“It’s an Internet that moves with you rather than against you, that doesn’t drag you down and force you back to the top. It emulates the natural way we move through narrative space (however illusory our linear perception of time may ultimately be, professor) and in doing so, it helps impose some order where chaos rules — or at least creates a clearing for context in an otherwise hostile wilderness.’’
Even better – read a book or take a walk.
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Back in Moscow, with Trump’s hero Vladimir Putin, we see that lawyer Nikolai Gorokhov died the other day after he was pushed out of a window. He had been working on behalf of the family of whistleblower Sergei Magnitsky, who was murdered in a Russian prison.
Then we have a former Russian member of parliament who defected to Ukraine and began sharply criticizing Putin gunned down Thursday in downtown Kiev in an apparent contract killing.
Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko called the murder of Denis Voronenkov, a former member of Russia’s Communist Party who fled to Kiev in October 2016, an “act of state terrorism by Russia.”
Putin’s enemies tend to have untimely deaths.
This is the regime with which some Trump colleagues have been very close. As investigations continue in Washington into cooperation between the Trump team and Putin’s murderous kleptocracy, the smell of Russia-linked corruption grows ever stronger in the White House. The Trump-Russia connection is a real scandal.
Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker (a Republican who, with California’s Jerry Brown, a Democrat, may be the best governor in America) has wisely dropped a proposal to end all weekend MBTA commuter rail service to reduce the agency’s red ink, though apparently there might still be weekend cutbacks on some lines.
The original proposal would have made the MBTA the only commuter rail service in America to shut down on weekends! With work schedules becoming more fluid and business and building booming in Boston, such a shutdown would have been a false economy.
Of course, labor contracts and some other things need to be changed at the deficit-ridden agency but, still, it produces far more wealth for Greater Boston than it costs. It does this by easing road congestion, making business schedules more reliable, reducing the disruption from bad weather, providing a service that lets people work (and sleep!) while they commute and all in all improving the quality of life in Greater Boston (and to some extent in Rhode Island, too.) And, if you tally up all the costs, it’s always cheaper to take the train than to drive a car you own. The MBTA is a major reason that Greater Boston is prosperous.
What the MBTA needs to do is to heavily promote its weekend service to raise ridership. Regularity and reliability of service are essential for successful promotion.
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One good thing about President Trump’s budget proposal is that its extreme cuts in some programs encourage serious thinking about what the Feds should do. For example, do we really need the Small Business Administration? How about the billions of dollars a year in giveaways to agribusiness?
I was thinking of adding the relatively tiny National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities to this question. Their foes note that they tend to appeal to the affluent. However, they both provide, among other projects, very useful educational programs for public schools in poor districts.
As for NPR and PBS, while they also tend to appeal to more affluent (and older) people, they do important public-information work in news and other fields that commercial stations do less and less of, and they’re accessible to everyone. They deserve public support (and provide exposure for the sort of individuals and groups – artists, writers, etc. -- who benefit from the NEA and NEH). That the BBC is arguably the world’s best broadcast news operation can be explained in part by the fact that it doesn’t depend on ads. As most commercial news organizations continue to lay off reporters to maximize profit, NPR and PBS have had to step up their efforts to help keep the public informed.
By the way, the annual cost to the taxpayers of security for the Trump family at their gilded residences and as they fly around among their estates and on their luxury vacations and business trips may end up exceeding the total budget of the NEA, which right now is about $150 million a year, as is the NEH’s. Not only is this famously tax-avoiding clan costing the taxpayers a fortune so that the family can continue to live in the baronial style they demand but the taxpayers are in effect paying to promote the Trump Organization’s business interests.
What a country!
Anyway, let’s take a good look at the Trump budget before cursing the whole thing because of some of its horrors, such as its attack on the Environmental Protection Agency and the State Department. It’s always healthy every few years to review our assumptions and look at the outcomes of government programs. And, yes, the political third rails of Social Security and Medicare do need reform.
No-bid public contracts should be avoided except in times of extreme need. They often raise questions of propriety and can spawn suspicions of corruption. Thus it is with a no-bid $225,000 consulting contract for Terrance W. Gainer Sr. LLC to help formulate strategies to increase diversity in the Rhode Island State Police.
Mr. Gainer is a politically connected and nationally respected former law-enforcement person. (He also used to be the U.S. Senate’s sergeant-at-arms, among other jobs.) As it turns out, Mr. Gainer’s niece Bridget gave a $1,000 campaign donation to Rhode Island Gov. Gina Raimondo’s election campaign in 2014. The two women had discussed public-pension reform on TV in Chicago, where Ms. Gainer is a Cook County commissioner who has been considered a possible future Democratic mayoral candidate. Ms. Raimondo had become nationally known for public-pension reform in her term as state treasurer. GoLocalProv broke this story on March 16.
A spokesman for the governor said that her office had recommended Mr. Gainer’s firm but that she hadn’t known of Bridget Gainer’s link to Terrance Gainer until well after the State Police announced the hiring, in February. I doubt if there was any quid pro quo but this sort of thing undermines public trust in the state contract process. Stay away from no-bid contracts; they tend to carry the aroma
of real or perceived corruption.
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My friends at The Boston Guardian report that there’s an effort underway to get some residents to help reduce the swelling Canada geese population by “egg-addling,’’ which includes “painting vegetable oil on the eggs or gently scrambling them so they don't come to term. ‘’ Sounds cruel, but the goose droppings are a bit of a health issue, albeit probably exaggerated.
Marion Larson, spokeswoman for the Massachusetts Division of Fisheries and Wildlife, explains that Canada geese were once used as live decoys for hunters until that practice was banned in the ‘30s. But, she told The Guardian, while many of these birds were then liberated, they had “their migratory instincts bred out of them.’’ So now their descendants hang around all winter and make a mess, although they are fun to watch.
They particularly love golf courses, which take up too much open space.
Like raccoons and more recently coyotes, these wild animals have learned to live among people, opportunistically taking advantage of the human-related food, such as garbage and backyard plants, and the relative lack of other predators near people. Given how human over-population is rapidly taking over and ruining much wildlife habitat, in the end perhaps only such opportunistic species will thrive in the future.
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The role of governors and states’ dominant political philosophy and policy in the economic success or lack thereof of these jurisdictions has always been exaggerated. Economies are very complicated. You see this in the list of states that haven't regained the jobs lost in the Great Recession. In New England, those are Rhode Island and Connecticut – both states mostly run by liberal Democrats. But the other states on the list --- Alabama, Michigan, Mississippi, New Mexico and Wyoming – are all run by Republicans.
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I’ve had some medical adventures, most recently cataract operations.
For one thing, I’ve been surprised by the extent to which I’d been seeing things through a grayish/brownish haze for years, with loss of depth and color perception.
Everything is now much, much sharper and more vivid. A handy improvement as we slide into the colors of spring. Of course, there will still be plenty of things I’d be better off not seeing.
Cataracts used to make many people legally blind – but they’re now removed and replaced in fast, efficient, assembly lines in outpatient clinics.
Consider such much more traumatic procedures as coronary-artery bypass surgery (which I’ve also had) – a rather gory affair. These things are now routine.
That’s a happy note in the cacophony about U.S. healthcare reform, whose problems are more about payment than about treatment. The sickest part of our healthcare system is our insurance system, upon which feed physicians, hospitals, insurance companies and pharmaceutical and medical-device companies all striving to maximize their profits.
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So the last of what were called in their mid-20th Century heyday “The Brothers,’’ has died at 101. David Rockefeller, like his brothers, Nelson (New York governor, vice president and would-be president); Winthrop, who among other things was governor of Arkansas (of all places), and John D. Rockefeller III and Laurance, the latter two best known as philanthropists, all saw public service in various forms as their calling. David, however, is most remembered for his time running the Chase Manhattan Bank, now JP Morgan Chase.
They all had their foibles, Winthrop and Nelson particularly, but all in all they represented a kind of quiet noblesse oblige/civic-mindedness, combined with an innovative spirit, that looks particularly edifying compared to some of the Big Money types today.
"Barbara and I were deeply saddened to hear that our wonderful friend, David Rockefeller, has passed from this good earth," former President George H. W. Bush said. "So many knew him as one of the most generous philanthropists — and brightest Points of Light — whose caring and commitment to the widest range of worthy causes touched and lifted innumerable lives."
Actually quite accurate. The vast fortune made by the Rockefeller Brothers’ sometimes rapacious grandfather John D. Rockefeller, the founder of Standard Oil and America’s first billionaire, ended up doing a lot of good, especially under the stewardship of his son, John D. Rockefeller Jr. and his hard-working sons. (Their other grandfather was the very tough and very pro-business U.S. Sen. Nelson Aldrich of Rhode Island, nicknamed the “general manager of the United States.’’)
‘’Rich as Rockefeller’’ was a phrase you’d hear all over the place until a few decades ago. Long before I worked in New York in the ‘70s, when “The Brothers’’ still bestrode the city as benevolent dukes, their name had come to evoke good works as much as wealth.
Travel + Leisure magazine has declared the College of the Holy Cross, in Worcester, to have the most beautiful college campus in Massachusetts. I have always found it windswept ( it is on a high hill) and forbidding. Worcester Polytechnic Institute’s campus is considerably more inviting.
Related Slideshow: The 50 Greatest Living Rhode Islanders
In October 2016, Brown University Professor J. Michael Kosterlitz was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics. He has been at Brown since 1982.
The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences announced that it awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics 2016 to three U.S. scientists, including Kosterlitz ”for theoretical discoveries of topological phase transitions and topological phases of matter."
"They revealed the secrets of exotic matter," wrote the Academy in their release. "This year’s Laureates opened the door on an unknown world where matter can assume strange states. They have used advanced mathematical methods to study unusual phases, or states, of matter, such as superconductors, superfluids or thin magnetic films. Thanks to their pioneering work, the hunt is now on for new and exotic phases of matter. Many people are hopeful of future applications in both materials science and electronics."
The Academy wrote:
The three Laureates’ use of topological concepts in physics was decisive for their discoveries. Topology is a branch of mathematics that describes properties that only change step-wise. Using topology as a tool, they were able to astound the experts. In the early 1970s, Michael Kosterlitz and David Thouless overturned the then current theory that superconductivity or suprafluidity could not occur in thin layers. They demonstrated that superconductivity could occur at low temperatures and also explained the mechanism, phase transition, that makes superconductivity disappear at higher temperatures.
Barnaby Evans is the creator of WaterFire, cited as one of America’s most important pieces of public art. Friedrich St. Florian called WaterFire the “crown jewel of the Providence Renaissance.”
He has won numerous regional, national and global awards for his creation of WaterFire. The event has helped to transform Providence.
As his bio states, he "is also known for his photography which is included in the permanent collections of the Victoria and Albert Museum, London; the Bibliotheque National, Paris; the Musee’ d’art et d’histoire, Fribourg, Switzerland; the Addison Gallery of American Art, Andover, Massachusetts; and the Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design among others."
Ambassador Middendorf has a brilliantly diverse legacy. Financier, ambassador, and accomplished musical composer.
He served in World War II, was an investment banker, served as the U.S. Ambassador to the Netherlands, and served as Secretary of the Navy.
Middendorf graduated from the College of the Holy Cross in 1945 with a bachelor's degree in naval science after having served in World War II as an engineering officer and navigator aboard LCS 53. He then earned an A.B. from Harvard College in 1947 and received his MBA from the Stern School of Business, at New York University in 1954.
Middendorf founded the investment banking firm Middendorf, Colgate and Company, and held a seat on the New York Stock Exchange.
“Having learned how to make money,” he writes in his memoir, “I wanted to learn how to make a difference.” He became actively involved in politics, first at the local level in Connecticut and then with the presidential campaign of Senator Barry Goldwater in 1964 as treasurer of the Republican National Committee.
During his time as Secretary of the Navy, Middendorf oversaw the establishment of the General Dynamics facility at Quonset Point, now one of Rhode Island's largest employers. He also created the Marine Corps Marathon, and its trophy for the winner has been named in his honor.
He has authored two books, Glorious Disaster: Barry Goldwater's Presidential Campaign and the Origins of the Conservative Movement and Potomac Fever: A Memoir of Politics and Public Service.
Middendorf has written more than 100 marches and the Holland Symphony which he presented to Dutch Queen Juliana on the 25th anniversary of her ascension to the throne.
For his musical efforts, Middendorf received the “Edwin Franko Goldman Award” from the American Bandmasters Association and is a member of the American Society of Composers and Performers. Other of his honors include: Navy Distinguished Public Service Award (1976); the U.S. Olympic Committee Gold Shield Award; and the State of New York's Distinguished Patriot Award (1976).
He has lived in Little Compton, Rhode Island for decades.
Reynolds' books use sports as the framework, but are deeper examinations of poverty, race, and addiction.
His book "Fall River Dreams" defined him a leading American writer who uniquely captures the intersection of sports and culture.
“Bill Reynolds is one of the best writers around, and this book is the Friday Night Lights of high school basketball,” said Dan Shaughnessy of the Boston Globe.
"Success is a Choice," which he co-wrote with Rick Pitino, is a business "how to" book that was a New York Times best-seller.
Reynolds has written 11 books and was a sports reporter for the Providence Journal.
McCauley has been a leading voice in the alternative, indie rock sphere for more than a decade. His work is a mix of rock with folk, blues, and country influences.
Along with his band, McCauley won Rock Artist of the Year at the Boston Music Awards (beating out Aerosmith) in 2013. He is married to fellow musician Vanessa Carlton -- Stevie Nicks officiated their wedding.
Rickman has become the conscious of Rhode Island, calling out issues of inequity far before it was in vogue.
He served as a member of the Rhode Island General Assembly and as Deputy Secretary of State in Rhode Island. His efforts and leadership on civil rights issues have been consistent over the past 50 years.
His civil rights leadership is just one aspect of Rickman's accomplished legacy. He has owned small businesses, served as a TV talk show host, is a noted expert on books and so much more.
One of his most noted accomplishments was his critical role in helping to establish one of Rhode Island most successful tech companies - Virgin Pulse.
Today, Rickman founded and runs Stages of Freedom, an organization that provides everything from swim lessons to minority children to building a legacy of minority culture in Rhode Island.
Few business innovators in America have had the success of native Rhode Islander Davis.
He co-founded Tellme, raised more than $200M in capital, and helped to lead the company to more than $100 million in sales and 300 employees. Tellme was acquired by Microsoft for nearly $1 billion.
And he did it again with Upserve, formerly Swipely. The company is "the smart management assistant serving up clear guidance that makes your restaurant thrive" - a tech firm that creates an information infrastructure for restaurants. At the outset, he raised upwards of $50 million for Upserve. In 2020, it sold for $440 million.
If the Navy SEALs are the best trained and most respected in the United State Armed Forces, Moy is the "Mother" of the SEALs.
The Newport native is the embodiment of military lore. He was a famous SEAL instructor and one of his most infamous trainees was Jesse "The Body" Venture - Seal, professional Wrestler and Governor of Minnesota.
While most SEAL activity is undisclosed, his effort to recover Apollo 17 was globally broadcast.
Once dubbed the Godfather of Ethics Reform, West has been the driving force in reforming governmental ethics for three decades in Rhode Island.
His successes include a then-record fine against Governor Ed DiPrete, Separation of Powers, downsizing and modernizing the legislature, and the requirement of electronic filing of bills and making hearings accessible to the public.
He was the head of Common Cause RI for eighteen years and retired in 2006, but still remains a guiding force in reform. Under West, the master lever was eliminated and ethics reform moved through the General Assembly — all under the watchful eye of West.
West has taken on the most powerful forces — sometimes alone — and made Rhode Island a better place as a result.
Jenkins is the consummate American actor. His work ranges from everything from “The Witches of Eastwick” to “Hannah and Her Sisters” to HBO's "Six Feet Under" to his award-winning role in “Olive Kitteridge”
His formative acting years took place at Trinity Repertory Company (now Trinity Rep). Jenkins then returned later in his career to help save the financially struggling theater.
He has starred and appeared in more than 80 movies and television series or movies. In 2014, Jenkins and his wife Sharon received the Pell Award for Lifetime Achievement from Trinity Repertory Company in Providence.
In 2015, Jenkins won the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Miniseries or Movie for his performance as Henry Kitteridge in the HBO miniseries Olive Kitteridge.
In 2022, Jenkins portrayed Lionel Dahmer, father of notorious serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer, in Netflix's limited series Dahmer – Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story.
The former CEO and Chairman of Hasbro was a driving force in transforming the company from a toy manufacturer to an entertainment company.
Michael Jackson and slews of others came to Rhode Island to tour the company and negotiate licensing deals.
In the early 1990's he became a force in initiating ethics reform in Rhode Island. More recently, he endowed the creation of the Hassenfeld Institute for Public Leadership at Bryant University.
The Rhode Island-based Hassenfeld Foundation gave out nearly $10 million in donations in the most recently reported year.
Sister Antone was born in Central Falls, and educated at Salve Regina University, Villanova University, Harvard University and MIT Sloan School of Management.
Correspondingly, she has taught almost every level of education, rising to President of Salve Regina. There, she transformed the school, and Salve Regina’s national rankings and student profile vastly improved under her leadership.
During her tenure, the University's endowment grew from $1 million to more than $50 million and the University invested $76 million on renovations and expansions and has received numerous awards for restoring the historic mansions, cottages, and gatehouses on its campus. She transformed the University and correspondingly has won countless awards for her service.
Artist, visionary and business leader, Crenca took a crazy idea of developing a sustainable art cluster in Downtown Providence and made it the most unimaginable success, and has become a national model.
AS220 was founded in 1985 to "provide a local, unjuried, and uncensored home for the arts," and has grown to own and operate multiple facilities, currently providing artists live and/or work spaces, four exhibition spaces, a print shop, a media lab including a black and white darkroom, a fabrication lab, a stage, a recording studio, a black box theater, a dance studio, and a bar and restaurant.
In 2016, Crenca was awarded Honorary Degrees from two different Rhode Island Universities.
In 2018, Forbes announced its “America's Richest Self-Made Women” list and Rhode Island’s Carolyn Rafaelian came in at #21 on the list.
The list included Oprah Winfrey at #6, Sheryl Sandberg of Facebook at #12, Sara Blakely of Spanx tied with Rafaelian at #21, and Kylie Jenner at #27.
“Despite this crazy state, it’s possible for a Rhode Island woman to reach this self-made list. For that I am proud,” said Rafaelian, Founder and now former-CEO of Alex and Ani in an interview with GoLocal.
“I am thrilled with my new team in place and we will continue to attract all the right people and continue to streamline the business and its efficiency. After all, we are the jewelry capital of the world!” she said.
Under her leadership, Alex and Ani donated more than $50 million to organizations large and small.
She no longer serves as CEO and has gone on to launch a new jewelry company. She may be Rhode Island's most successful female CEO.
When one talks about trail blazers in Rhode Island, Louise Durfee’s image should be the first thing that comes to mind. She was the first female partner at a major Providence law firm at a time when most law firms did not employ women attorneys. She was one of a small group of Tiverton residents who joined together in the early 1970's to oppose a proposal to build a major oil refinery.
The fight was so profound that it was featured in 1971 in Life Magazine and resulted in the founding of an organization that ultimately became Save the Bay. Again, Durfee the trail blazer.
In the 1980’s she helped to clean up the aftermath at Rhode Housing after widespread corruption was found. In 1991, Governor Bruce Sundlun named her Director of the Department of Environmental Management and just three years later, he fired her.
So she ran against him in the Democratic primary for Governor.
Rhode Islanders were first introduced to Ron Machtley in 1988 when he traveled around Rhode Island with a pig named Lester “Less" Pork to point out the wasteful spending of then-Congressman Fred St. Germain.
Machtley upset the 28-year veteran and Chairman of the House Banking Committee to take the Congressional seat. In 1994, he was the odds-on-favorite to win the Governorship, but was upset in the GOP primary by Lincoln Almond, who went on to serve eight years as Governor.
After his defeat, he was the surprise choice to serve as President of then-Bryant College. At first appearances it was a strange choice, but Machtley could not have turned out to be a better selection.
Under his leadership, the college transformed to a University, with massive improvements in the University’s campus, an elevation to Division I Sports, and an overall improvement in Bryant’s academic position.
When he assumed office Bryant had a $1.7 million operating deficit and a tiny endowment. Today, the University’s endowment is nearing $200 million. Over the past 20 years, Bryant has become one of the most improved higher education institutions in America.
If this list of greatest living Rhode Islanders had been developed twenty years ago, it might have been rich with elected officials - the likes of Senators Claiborne Pell and John Chafee, the retired John O. Pastore and Bruce Sundlun, but today there are few with the gravitas of achievement of those politicians.
However, there is the now-senior Senator from Rhode Island, who has a national reputation as an expert on issues of national defense and is a constantly rumored to serve as the Secretary of Defense.
The former Army ranger worked his way up the political ladder as a State legislator and Congressman before winning the Senate seat of the retiring Pell.
In a time of great diverseness, he is a rare member that has conversations across the aisle.
Coxe has now headed three of the most most important preservation organizations in New England. As the long-time Executive Director of Save the Bay in the 1980's and 1990's, she was a powerful force in driving the preservation of Rhode Island's open space and improvements to Narragansett Bay.
Coxe lost a close race for Congress against Jack Reed, but was later appointed head of the largest Environmental Agency in New England when then-Governor Bill Weld named her head of the Massachusetts environmental agency - the Department of Environmental Protection.
After a multi-year stint in the Commonwealth, she came back to Rhode Island to lead and transform the Preservation Society of Newport. In that role she has helped to recpaitalize and modernize the non-profit that stewards the mansions and other assets in Newport and across Aquidneck Island.
No one on this list may be more accomplished in their individual field than Ken Read is to sailing. Twice the Rolex United States Yachtsman of the Year, three times leading America’s Cup yachts, and dominant in the Volvo Ocean Races for decades.
One could argue Read may be the most accomplished sailor in the world. He was a three-time college All-American at Boston University.
Today, he sails leading privately owned yachts and has been involved with the North Sail company.
There are few computer science professors that get tapped for their celebrity for a national television commercial (see below), but Brown University’s Littman is an academic rock star. After ten years at Rutgers he left to join the faculty at Brown
He leads an effort called Humanity-Centered Robotics Initiative (HCRI) in which Brown University aims to become a global leader in the field of creating robots that benefit, learn from, teach, support, and collaborate with people.
One of his recent journal articles he co-wrote was titled, “Learning behaviors via human-delivered discrete feedback: modeling implicit feedback strategies to speed up learning.”
For decades the nicest restaurant in Providence might have been the old Rusty Scupper, but in the 1980s, Johanne Killeen and George Germon not only transformed the restaurant scene in Providence, but also proved that small cities with brilliant chefs could compete.
Food & Wine honored Al Forno for launching 'a new era of ambitious cooking in Providence [in 1980] with their thin-crusted grilled pizzas topped with superfresh ingredients.' The editors singled out Al Forno's Margarita Pizza (with house-made pomodoro, fresh herbs, two cheeses and extra virgin olive oil) as the signature item.
John Mariani, the food writer for Esquire put the new restaurant, Al Forno, on the national map by naming it the best new restaurant in America. Other food and travel magazines followed and the recognition transformed Providence, and as a result other mid-sized cities.
Al Forno put Providence on the food map and sparked many other creative and smart chefs. George Germon passed away in October of 2015.
It has been a number of years since Terry Murray ran one of the biggest banks in America. In 2004, Fleet Bank was acquired by Bank of America. Even today, Bank of America is headed up by a former Fleet executive -- Brian Moynihan.
In the 1990s, Fleet was a superstar financial service firm — it gobbled up bank after bank in the U.S. and in 1999 Murray and Fleet made the biggest buy - acquiring BankBoston. The new FleetBoston was a megabank.
FleetBoston was the seventh-largest bank in the United States, as measured by assets (US$197 billion in 2003). It employed over 50,000, served more than 20 million customers globally, and revenues of $12 billion per year.
Murray grew Fleet from a small RI community bank to a global player.
The Cumberland brothers - Peter and Bobby - are two of the most prolific comedic movie makers in Hollywood. They created a genre of politically incorrect, slapstick humor that has generated billions in box office sales.
Their movies include Kingpin, There's Something About Mary and Dumb and Dumber -- to name a few of their 15 movies.
The Farrelly Brothers also co-wrote one of the all-time great Seinfeld episodes -- titled "The Virgin."
In 1965 Thompson came to Providence from South Carolina to attend Brown University and never went home. Today, she serves on the 1st Circuit Court of Appeals - one of the highest federal courts in America.
She was elevated to the seat previously held by Judge Bruce Selya. Before serving on the court she served on the District and Superior Courts in the Rhode Island Courts.
Today, she serves on the Brown Corporation, the Board for College Unbound, and Save the Bay.
Abruzzi is known as the "godfather of the New England surf/skate mafia."
"With a face that launched a thousand spliffs, ‘The Package’ has skated, surfed, and partied over the last 50 years with no end in sight. After reaching rockstar status with Big World in the mid ’80s, Sid’s infamous Water Bros. Surf shop brought vert skating to the beaches of Newport, RI," wrote Jim Murphy in Juice Magazine.
Before ESPN's X Games (Extreme Games) or the Gravity Games were envisioned, Abruzzi was an innovator helping to create a movement and industry that was primarily a West Coast phenomenon.
The blues guitarist and Woonsocket native is well-known locally for co-founding Roomful of Blues, but his presence on the national stage, performing with The Fabulous Thunderbirds and recording with the likes of Bob Dylan and Tom Waits has helped make Robillard a bona fide star in American music.
He is a two-time Grammy nominee, won the W.C. Handy Award in 2000 and 2001 for Best Blues Guitarist, and in 2007 received a Rhode Island Pell Award for Excellence in the Arts. But don’t take our word for it — Tom Clarke with Elmore Magazine extolled Robillard’s virtues when he reviewed “The Acoustic Blues & Roots of Duke Robillard” in 2015."
“A jazz man, a front porch pickin’ blues man and one-time guitarist for Dylan. A string band, jug band, ragtime, delta, Louisiana, Appalachian folk and Jimmie Rodgers-country aficionado. A backwards traveler, but forward thinker. A writer and singer with distinct style, and a studio owner and in-demand producer. Did I miss anything? Duke Robillard may wear a handsome, if nondescript, lid lounging on the cover of The Acoustic Blues,but he almost literally wears a hundred hats—all of them damn well. It’s hard to believe any one man can be as prolific as this Rhode Island Duke of the blues,” wrote Clarke.
Ghiorse may be Rhode Island’s most trusted and beloved television and digital news personality of all time. The Air Force Veteran and Harvard-educated weatherman studied Meteorology at Penn State. He transformed weather reporting in Rhode Island and created his own branded measure — the Ghiorse Factor.
He first joined WJAR-10 in 1968, then moved to Channel 6 for nearly a decade and then back to WJAR. He retired from Channel 10 in 2009 and joined GoLocal and helped the digital media company launch its first site in 2010. He has delivered the daily Ghiorse Factor to GoLocal for the past ten-plus years.
Ghiorse continues to be one of Southeastern New England’s most beloved news personalities.
Joe Mazzulla joined an exclusive list this past year — Red Auerbach, Bill Russell, Tom Heinshon, K.C. Jones, and Rick Pitino — as a head coach of the Boston Celtics.
Mazzulla took over as the interim coach at the tender age of 34 after Ime Uduka was fired for inappropriate behavior with a member of the staff.
Mazzulla led the Celtics to the second-best record in the NBA in his inaugural season and earned the permanent job mid-season.
He was born and raised in Rhode Island. Mazzulla enjoyed an All-state career at Bishop-Hendricken and then was a star at the University of West Virginia.
After college, it was on to a career in coaching.
He is in the midst of a three-year contract with the Celts, and with a team featuring two of the NBA’s brightest stars — Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown — he has the opportunity to be an immortal.
He is the first Rhode Islander to lead the Celtics.
Rhode Island has always been one of the top destinations for Cape Verde emigres.
Emerson College Professor and Brown University Fellow Andrade-Watkins, who grew up in Fox Point, has had a storied career, including a thirty-year retrospective of her work at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston.
The subject was “Our Rhode: 30 Years of Cinema by and About Cape Verdian Rhode Islanders.”
Andrade-Watkins, a PhD, is Professor of Africana and Postcolonial Media Studies at Emerson, and is a Fellow at the Swearer Center for Public Service at Brown (as well as a visiting scholar). She is the Director of the Fox Point Cape Verdean Project, President, SPIA Media Productions, Inc., and a pioneer of global, intercultural media, marketing and distribution. Her CV of work and accomplishments is 17 pages long.
In 2006 Dr. Andrade-Watkins released "Some Kind of Funny Porto Rican?" A Cape Verdean American Story" (SKFPR), the “popular and critically acclaimed feature documentary about the Cape Verdean community in the Fox Point section of Providence, RI, and the first in a trilogy of documentaries about this unique and important community of the Africana Diaspora,” states her Emerson bio.
She’s won numerous awards including the 2008 Community Service Award from Fox Point Boys & Girls Club Alumni Association.
St. Florian is one of the most accomplished and varied architects in America. At one extreme he was the architect of the critically acclaimed World War II memorial in Washington, DC and on the other he designed the Providence Place Mall.
St.Florian has won numerous awards for his architectural achievements. He is a Fellow of the American Institute of Architects and a Fellow of the American Academy in Rome. His drawings are in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the Georges Pompidou Centre in Paris. In 2006 he was awarded an honorary degree from Brown University.
Over the past few decades, Brad Read has built Sail Newport into a leading world class sailing education organization. Their programs vary from a partnership with the MET school that introduces urban children to sailing to running world class sailing events.
In 2015, Read was the driving force to bringing the Volvo Ocean Race to Rhode Island and then followed it up by leading the state’s effort to successfully bring the Volvo race back in 2017.
Read is a leading sailor, educator, facilitator, organizer and leader. His impact on Newport — and Rhode Island — has been remarkable.
In a scene in the movie Good Will Hunting, Matt Damon humiliates a Harvard grad student by picking apart the student’s thesis regarding Wood’s “pre-revolutionary utopia.” (see scene below)
Matt Damon aside, Wood is one of America’s most accomplished scholars on the American Revolution — he won the 1993 Pulitzer Prize for History for his work The Radicalism of the American Revolution. In 2010 he was awarded the National Humanities Medal.
He is the Alva O. Way University Professor and Professor of History Emeritus at Brown University. His list of academic awards over the past 50 years is unmatched - he is the leading Revolutionary era historian.
For the past 60 years Hazeltine has been one of the most important educators at Brown University. While Brown does not have a traditional B-School like Penn’s Wharton, it does have one of the top American business mentors. According to many of the top business leaders in America, Hazeltine was a guiding influence on their careers.
A 2000 article in Brown Alumni Monthly unveiled in 2000 that 10% of the freshman class at Brown University took his “Engin. 9” class — short for Engineering 9.
Entrepreneurs as diverse as “Tom and Tom” (First and Scott, who met at Brown), Founders of Nantucket Nectars to John Koudounis, the CEO of Calamos Investment to Marques Coleman at Carlyle Group all identify Hazeltine as being a driving force in their business careers.
Donoghue is one of the leading brain science researchers and entrepreneurs in the world. At Brown, he led the enhancement and growth of the Brain Science Center and his work to develop BrainGate, a mind-to-movement system developed in Donoghue’s lab.
Donoghue has published over 80 scientific articles in leading journals including Nature and Science. His work was featured on 60 Minutes and he has served on advisory panels for the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation and NASA.
The Warwick native is a two-time Academy Award nominee and winner of a Golden Globe, and three-time Emmy Award winner. His acting career ranges from The Onion Field to Casino and Nixon.
More recently his voice work has been featured on The Simpsons, Family Guy, and Stuart Little 2.
Between TV, voiceover work and movies he has played roles in more than 100 productions.
Once dubbed as a genius by Business Insider for his attendance at MIT and his reported near-perfect SAT score and IQ of 184.
Today he is a Republican activist. He has also been the center of a number of social media and political controversies.
Violet was one of a group of pioneering women who changed the face of politics in Rhode Island.
Claudine Schneider had been elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1980 in the 2nd Congressional District. Susan Farmer won the Secretary of State post two years later in 1982. Violet was the first female Attorney General in the United States when she was elected by Rhode Island voters in 1984. The new decade had ushered in a new era in Rhode Island politics. All three were Republicans.
It was her work and the work of other women that set the stage for Governor Gina Raimondo to be elected Rhode Island's first woman Governor in 2014.
Violet was defeated in her re-election bid in 1986, but her political presence continued in the state.
She was a talk radio host.
She penned two books, Convictions: My Journey from the Convent to the Courtroom and Me and the Mob, a book about the witness protection program. Violet was inducted into the Rhode Island Heritage Hall of Fame in 1996.
A native Rhode Islander, TV-journalist Vieira is one of the leading Portuguese Americans in the United States. She attended Lincoln School and Tufts before landing her first job in Worcester in radio and on television as a reporter at WJAR-TV in Providence.
Her hard news journalism bona fides were earned while working on the CBS news magazine West 57th, then as an investigative reporter for 60 Minutes.
Then in the late 1990s she shifted to more entertainment-focused broadcast as a co-host to The View, hosting the game show “Who Wants To Be A Millionaire,” co-hosting the Today Show and Dateline NBC. She hosted her own show, The Meredith Viera Show for two years.
More recently she has been involved with a range of event and initiatives in Rhode Island including speaking at RIC regarding her heritage — all four of her grandparents were born in the Azores. Last year, URI’s Harrington School of Communication traveled down to Viera’s show at NBC Universal.
Brown University's Leon Cooper held the distinction as Rhode Island’s only Nobel Prize winner -- until colleague J. Michael Kosterlitz earned the honor in 2016.
Cooper won the Nobel Prize in 1972 for Physics (along with J. Bardeen and J.R. Schrieffer) for his studies on the theory of superconductivity. The winning work was completed while still in his 20s.
He has received seven honorary degrees from leading academic institutions from across the globe.
In the past few years, his work at Brown has focused on neural and cognitive sciences and has been “working towards an understanding of memory and other brain functions, and thus formulating a scientific model of how the human mind works.”
There are certain athletes who transcend the game and elevate it from sports to a higher level of entertainment. Ernie D. was one of those rare athletes. He was am epic story, the 6 foot guard from North Providence who helped to take the beloved Providence College Friars to the final four. His skills and showmanship helped to transform the game from fundamentals to entertainment along with players like Connie Hawkins, Pistol Pete Maravich, Dr. J, and then Larry Bird, Magic Johnson and Michael Jordan. They all may have had better and longer careers, but none of them put on any better a show.
His NBA career was cut short due to injury but in his first year in the league he dazzled and won the NBA Rookie of the year. He was the third pick in the NBA draft.
For Rhode Islanders at the time his achievements were mythical. He teamed with fellow local boy Marvin Barnes and put little Providence College in the same sentence with powerhouse programs like UCLA.
Arguably the best swimmer to come out of Rhode Island, the Saunderstown native and North Kingstown high school grad first competed in the 2007 World Championships at the tender age of 14, placing 12th in the world in the 200 meter backstroke after advancing to the semi-finals.
Beisel was the youngest member of the U.S. swim team at the 2008 Olympics in Beijing, finishing just out of medal contention with a fourth place in the 400-meter individual medley and fifth in the 200 meter backstroke. Four years later in London, Beisel made it to the Olympic podium with a silver in the 400 meter individual relay and a bronze in the 200 meter backstroke.
The SEC Female Swimmer of the Year in 2012, Beisel won two individual national titles and was an eighteen-time All-American at the University of Florida, and a first-team Academic All-American. According to her USA Swimming bio, the college communications major had dreams as a child of being an actress, but now has professional aspirations of being a news anchor. As someone accustomed to being in the headlines, it’s not hard to imagine we’ll be seeing more from Beisel in the future.
“The Woonsocket Rocket” is one of Rhode Island’s most storied athletes and is now a top baseball manager.
As a high school athlete at Bishop-Hendricken, Baldelli was a phenom.
He was also a four-sport star, earning all-state honors in baseball, indoor track, basketball, and volleyball.
The Tampa Bay Devil Rays picked Baldelli in the first round (6th overall) of the 2000 Major League Baseball draft.
His career in the major could not have started better — he was the third-highest vote-getter for the American League Rookie of the Year Award.
He immediately established himself as one of the best defensive outfielders in baseball.
After two outstanding seasons, he was hit with a series of serious injuries and then diagnosed with mitochondrial disease.
He retired and first went to work in the front office of Tampa and then went into coaching.
Baldelli was named manager of the Minnesota Twins after the 2018 season.In 2019, he led them to 101 wins and an AL Central Division title and was named the 2019 American League manager of the year. At 38 years old, he was the youngest manager to win the award.
He is in the midst of his fifth year as manager and has twice won the American League, and at the time of this writing, his Twins are leading the Division.
Grammy Award-winning Osborne, born and raised in Providence, came from musical lineage. His father, Clarence “Legs” Osborne was a trumpeter who played with the likes of Duke Ellington and Count Basie. And the Osborne roots are firmly planted here — in 2012, the city named a portion of Olney Street “Jeffrey Osborne Way,” to honor him.
Osborne’s biggest hits include “On the Wings of Love” and a duet with Dionne Warwick, “Love Power.” He wrote the lyrics for Whitney Houston’s “All at Once,” appeared in the fundraising “We Are the World” video in 1985, and has sung the national anthem at multiple World Series and NBA finals games.
While Osborne is an international legend in his own right, his star status continues to grow and impact the community here through his charity work. He’s done golf and softball classics, comedy nights, celebrity basketball games. And he brings in the big names, from Magic Johnson to Smokey Robinson to Kareem Abdul Jabbar — the list is extensive. Osborne is the epitome of a “greatest Rhode Islander” — one who’s gone on to make the state proud, and keeps coming back to help use his celebrity to benefit the community.
Ryan helped to build one of America’s Fortune 500 top 10 companies, as CVS is a leading retail and healthcare force in America.
More recently, the URI pharmacy grad has been involved with two of the biggest initiatives in Rhode Island in the past few years.
He and his wife Anne donated $15 million to fund the George and Anne Ryan Center on Neuroscience at URI. The effort is one of the key elements in bringing together major educational and health organizations in a broad-based neuroscience initiative in Rhode Island.
Ryan’s neuroscience gift coupled with his fundraising leadership and donations to build the Ryan Center have made him the single biggest individual donor to URI.
Born in West Warwick and a URI grad, Hood is a best-selling novelist and short story writer; and the author of fifteen books, with her latest, The Book That Matters the Most, due out this August.
Hood has won two Pushcart Prizes, two Best American Food Writing Awards, Best American Spiritual Writing and Travel Writing Awards, and a Boston Public Library Literary Light Award. Her essays and short stories have appeared in The Paris Review, Ploughshares, and Tin House. Hood is a regular contributor to The New York Times' Op-Ed page, and is a faculty member in the MFA in Creative Writing program at The New School in New York City. Hood’s “An Italian Wife” was recently featured as a play at the Contemporary Theater Company in South Kingstown.
Of Hood's The Knitting Circle, The Washington Post wrote, “A wondrously simple book about something complicated: the nearly unendurable process of enduring a great loss." Fellow best-selling writer Jodi Picoult even asked if anyone could top Hood. “Is there anyone who can write about the connections of ordinary people better than Ann Hood?" posed Picoult.
While her reach is worldwide, Hood lives in Providence and is a fixture in the Rhode Island community.
Ballard found the Titanic. And yes, he was a URI undergrad and now serves multiple leading roles at URI as a Professor of Oceanography; Director, Center for Ocean Exploration; and head of the Institute for Archaeological Oceanography.
Today, the Archeological Oceanography, which he started in 2003 is a unique institute “combines the disciplines of oceanography, ocean engineering, maritime history, anthropology and archeology into one academic program.” The institute involves a broad cross section of URI faculty and includes faculty from Harvard University, the University of Pennsylvania, Florida State University, MIT and Woods Hole.
He is the rockstar face of oceanography in the world.
Nelson is one of America’s leading investors. In an era of Wall Street mega firms, Rhode Islander Nelson has built in Downtown Providence a $40 billion private equity fund Providence Equity Group.
Once the golden boys of private equity and lauded for putting together “the biggest deal in the world,” he and the firm have had a series of set backs.
The highest profile bump was the firm’s loss of nearly $800 million in the firm, Altegrity, that was contracted to review federal contractors like Edward Snowden.
As GoLocal previously reported, the domino effect of Snowden’s absconding with federal data bases exposed the deficiencies of Altegrity’s vetting process.
He has become more active as a philanthropist and is listed by Forbes richest in Rhode Island.
Littky is a rebel, a disruptor, an innovator, a trouble maker, and an educator. They made a movie about him, Newsweek has featured his schools, President Obama talks about his schools and Bill and Melinda Gates gave him millions to grow, refine and scale is model of disruption.
In 2009, Littky defied all and created an alternative college and by 2015 the Rhode Island Council on Postsecondary Education approved College Unbound as a degree-granting postsecondary option in the state.
In Rhode Island, The Met School celebrated its 20th Anniversary this past week. Thousands of students who would not have finished high school have graduated and moved on to college, business and beyond.
There may be no more accomplished innovator than Littky.
Gina Raimondo is one of Rhode Island’s most accomplished and aggressive politicians in the state’s history.
In recent months she has said she would consider running for President in the future.
The two-term former Governor of Rhode Island today serves as the U.S. Secretary of Commerce in the administration of Joe Biden.
She broke onto the scene when she ran for General Treasurer in 2010 and immediately pushed for “pension reform” that cut the pension benefits of some state retirees.
Teachers and state workers saw their COLAs slashed while other classes saw little change. It was her change in investment strategy — a push to alternative investments — primarily hedge funds — that has drawn criticism from Wall Street watchdog Ted Siedle and others for their high fees.
Her record as governor and as Commerce secretary has drawn fire from progressives within the Democratic Party.
In October of 2022, Politico wrote, "Some progressives say Raimondo is too close to corporate leaders and helps them shape policies in forums like the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework, a pact that Biden founded as a counterweight to China where they fear she will try to curb efforts to regulate American tech giants.”
In the short-term, Raimondo is believed to be the potential successor to Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen (a Brown University grad), but that is now only likely to happen if Biden wins a second term.
Raimondo, a graduate of Yale, Harvard, and Oxford, is now in her early 50s and is likely to be a major player in national politics for the next twenty-plus years.
There are few people in the world that are recognized as the very best in their craft, but Nick Benson of the John Stevens Shop in Newport is globally recognized as the best stone cutter in the world.
Founded in 1705, The John Stevens Shop specializes in the design and execution of one-of-a-kind inscriptions in stone — the MLK Memorial, FDR’s Four Freedoms Park, and the inscription for the John F. Kennedy Memorial in Arlington National Cemetery, to name a few.
Benson won a Genius Fellowship from the MacArthur Foundation, and was recently featured on CBS news. The John Stevens Shop is one of America’s longest continuously running businesses.
Davis is one of the most accomplished actors in the United States. She is the winner of two Tony awards, an Emmy and a SAG award as well as an Oscar. With regard to her Emmy, she became the first African-American to win the Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series in 2015. Amazingly, she did not earn her SAG card until she was 30 years old.
Davis self-describes that she grew up in abject poverty in Central Falls and worked her way to Rhode Island College and now beyond but has been a constant force in helping Central Falls to recover from its bankruptcy and rebuilding its spirit.
She is a leading fundraiser for a range of Rhode Island causes. Davis is the embodiment of the Rhode Island spirit and a model of how to overcome the greatest challenges to reach greatness.
