Inductees from 2005

Joseph Banigan (1839-1898)
Categories: Education & Universities, Historians/Historical Accounts, Preservation, Immigrants: Irish, Industry - General, Philanthropists, Religion & Churches

Joseph Banigan (1839-1898) and his parents were part of a wave of Irish Catholic refugees who fled the Potato Famine in Ireland. Arriving in Rhode Island in 1847, he attended school for one year before becoming a full-time worker at age nine. Over the next fifty years he employed the "pluck and luck" characteristics of Yankee entrepreneurs to build a local footwear empire before assuming the presidency of the United States Rubber Company in 1893.

Banigan was a youthful apprentice in the jewelry industry before tinkering with rubber products. Read more >
Governor Augustus Osborn Bourn (1834-1925)
Categories: Civic Leaders, Government & Politics, Historians/Historical Accounts, Preservation, Industry - General

Governor Augustus O. Bourn (1834-1925) was born in Providence in 1834 to a distinguished old-line Rhode Island family whose earliest ancestor Jared Bourn served as a Portsmouth representative to the colonial assembly in 1654-55. After graduation from Brown University in 1855, Bourn joined his father in the business of manufacturing India-rubber goods.

In 1864, Bourn founded the National Rubber Company in Bristol which had a workforce of over 1100 within twenty years of its establishment and became, by far, Bristol's largest industry. Read more >
Sarah Elizabeth Doyle (1830-1922)
Categories: Civil Rights / Abolitionists, Education & Universities, Historians/Historical Accounts, Preservation, Women

Doyle, Sarah Elizabeth, 1830-1922

Sarah Elizabeth Doyle (1830-1922) was a lifelong resident of Rhode Island who participated in the social reform ferment that engulfed the state during the Gilded Age. Despite the conservative political nature of local thinking, she successfully pioneered educational opportunities for women at the highest level.

She entered Providence High School during its initial enrollment in 1843 and would later teach there from 1856 to 1892. During that time she helped nurture other women in the field of education while searching for institutional ways to solidify academic gains. Read more >
Norma Ann (Bergquist) Garnett, Ed.D. (1930-)
Categories: Education & Universities, Women

Garnett, Norma Ann, 1930-

Norma Ann (Bergquist) Garnett, Doctor Education, an innovative educator, has been a luminary in foreign language education since 1964. Dr. Garnett has instructed thousands of students and mentored hundreds of teachers, while receiving many prestigious local and national honors. She received one of Rhode Island’s first Milken Educator Awards. Read more >
Charles E. Gorman (1844-1917)
Categories: Civil Rights / Abolitionists, Historians/Historical Accounts, Preservation, Law / Legal Pioneers

Gorman, Charles Edmund, 1844-1917

Charles E. Gorman was Rhode Island's foremost constitutional reformer of the late 19th century. He was born in Boston in 1844 to an Irish immigrant father for whom he was named and a Yankee mother, Sarah Woodbury, who traced her Massachusetts ancestry to the Cape Ann colony of the early 1620s.

Gorman was three years old when his parents came to Providence. Read more >
Dr. William W. Keen (1837-1932)
Categories: Historians/Historical Accounts, Preservation, Medicine & Health Care, Military

Keen, William W. (William Williams), 1837-1932

Dr. William W. Keen (1837-1932) of Swedish and Dutch extraction, was a man of stern principles and unwavering convictions and a diligent worker in the Calvinist tradition. Read more >
Idawally "Ida" Lewis (1842-1911)
Categories: Historians/Historical Accounts, Preservation, Military, Women
Lewis, Ida, 1842-1911
Idawalley “Ida” Lewis is considered the most famous person ever to serve in the U.S. Lighthouse Service, an agency that evolved into the U. S. Read more >
Charles I. D. Looff (1852-1918)
Categories: Artists & Painters, Craftsmen, Historians/Historical Accounts, Preservation

Charles I.D. Looff (1852-1918) is considered the first of the great American carousel builders having created 17 of them during his long career--some of which was spent living and working in Riverside, Rhode Island.

Charles I. Read more >
Rear Admiral Stephen B. Luce (1827-1917)
Categories: Historians/Historical Accounts, Preservation, Military

Luce, Stephen Bleecker, 1827-1917 Rear Admiral Stephen R. Luce was a founder and first president of the United States Naval War College in Newport. Luce entered the navy in 1841 as a midshipman and attended the U. Read more >
Rear Admiral Alfred Thayer Mahan (1840-1914)
Categories: Education & Universities, Historians/Historical Accounts, Preservation, Military

Mahan, A. T. (Alfred Thayer), 1840-1914

Rear Admiral Alfred Thayer Mahan (1840-1914), the best known and most influential naval officer of the late 19th century, ironically was born at West Point, the son of Dennis Hart Mahan, a professor of military engineering and dean of faculty at the U.S. Read more >
Dr. John J. McLaughlin (1927-)
Categories: Government & Politics, Literature / Writers / Newspapers, Religion & Churches, TV & Radio

The marvelous story of Rhode Island's own John Joseph McLaughlin leads one through more twists and turns than a Rocky Point roller coaster. Born on March 29, 1927 to Augustus and Eva (Turcotte) McLaughlin, he grew up in the neighborhoods of Edgewood and Mount Pleasant. His earliest run at greatness included stints as a pharmacy soda jerk, Triggs greenskeeper and caddy, Narragansett Park racetrack money-runner and a stock boy at Shepard's department store.

After successfully negotiating Blessed Sacrament Elementary School and LaSalle Academy, John entered the seminary, was ordained a Jesuit priest in 1960, obtained Master's degree in Philosophy and English from Boston College, and ultimately received a doctorate in Communications from Columbia University. Read more >
Chester R. Nichols, Jr. (1931-1995)
Categories: Sports - Baseball

Chester R. “Chet” Nichols spent nine years as a major league pitcher. As a rookie with the Boston Braves, he led the National League in 1951 with the lowest earned run average. Chet was a schoolboy pitching star and all-state selection at Pawtucket East High School. Read more >
Judge Raymond J. Pettine (1912-2003)
Categories: Law / Legal Pioneers

Judge Raymond J. Pettine (1912-2003) is remembered as one of Rhode Island's most distinguished jurists, especially revered for his commitment to freedom of expression and equal treatment for all, including even those who are despised by the majority.

Judge Pettine was appointed to the United States District Court by President Lyndon B. Johnson in 1966 and became that Court's Chief Judge in 1971, serving in that capacity until 1982, when he began a tenure as senior judge for more than a decade. Read more >
Major General Harold N. Read
Categories: Civic Leaders, Military

General Harold Read started his military career in 1942 as a member of the Rhode Island State Guard. He was inducted into federal service during World War II and served in the European Theater as a member of the IX Troop Carrier Command, First Allied Airborne Army. He participated in the airborne invasions of Normandy, Southern France, and The Netherlands. He rose through the enlisted ranks, and in September, 1945 he was selected to serve as a member of A Company, 503d Military Police Battalion, the guard company for General George C. Read more >
George L. Sisson (1919-)
Categories: Civic Leaders, Historians/Historical Accounts, Preservation
- Born in Portsmouth, R.I. 1919, Resident of Bristol since 1963
- Fall River Public Schools, Durfee High, 1938
- William & Mary College, A.B. Read more >
- Friedrich St. Florian, AIA
  Categories: Architects & Designers
  
  "War must not be glorified, but war must be remembered." Friedrich St. Florian set out to do just that. His design of the National World War II Memorial in Washington, D. Read more >
- Milton Stanzler, Esq.
  Categories: Law / Legal Pioneers
  
  Milton Stanzler founded the Rhode Island affiliate of the American Civil Liberties Union and served as its first president in 1959. He built the organization into a formidable operation that supported the separation of church and state and freedom of speech locally. The United States Supreme Court decided several of his cases. Milton often took the lead in some of these controversial issues arguing, for instance,
  
  against censorship in the famous drama, Tobacco Road. Read more >
- Theodore Barrows Stowell (1847-1916)
  Categories: Education & Universities, Historians/Historical Accounts, Preservation
  
  Theodore Barrows Stowell (1847-1916), a prominent Rhode Island educator, served as president of Bryant & Stratton Commercial College (now Bryant University) for nearly four decades. A native of Connecticut and descended from one of New England's earliest settlers, Stowell was drawn to the profession of teaching, and upon graduation from the Connecticut State Normal School, accepted a position with the Toilsome Hill District in Bridgeport. By 1870, he had relocated to Rhode Island joining the teaching staff at Bristol Ferry School in Portsmouth. Soon his talents were recognized and less than two years later, Stowell received an offer from a fledgling business college in Downtown Providence to become a member of its teaching staff. Read more >
- Alice A. Sullivan
  Categories: Sports - Other, Women
  
  When Alice Sullivan was growing up, she dreamed about playing high school sports. She never realized her dream but, thanks to her dedication, thousands of young women have experienced the thrill of being a high school athlete. For more than five decades, Alice Sullivan tirelessly dedicated herself to helping girls enjoy the benefits of athletic competition.
  
  As a student at Durfee High School, Alice's work earned official recognition for the girls athletic club, although its establishment did not occur until the year after she graduated. Read more >
- Reverend Mahlon Van Horne (1840-1910)
  Categories: African Americans, Civic Leaders, Civil Rights / Abolitionists, Government & Politics, Historians/Historical Accounts, Preservation, Religion & Churches
  
  Reverend Mahlon Van Horne (1840-1910) had a career that ranged from minister of the Gospel at the black Union Congregational Church at Newport to minister of diplomacy as United States Consul to St. Thomas in the West Indies. He was at heart always a teacher.
  
  Bom in Princeton New Jersey in 1840, Van Horne was graduated from Lincoln University in Pennsylvania. Read more >
- John Montgomery Ward (1860-1925)
  Categories: Historians/Historical Accounts, Preservation, Sports - Baseball, Sports - Golf
  
  John Montgomery “Monte” Ward, 1860-1925, a member of baseball's Hall of Fame, was a native of Bellefonte, Pennsylvania who attended Pennsylvania State College before embarking upon a career as a professional ballplayer. He reached the major leagues in 1878 as a pitcher for the Providence Grays of the National League, just two years after the founding of the so-called “Senior Circuit.”
  
  In his first year, the eighteen-year-old Ward recorded the National League's lowest earned run average (1.51) while compiling a record of 22 wins and 13 losses. Read more >
- Stanford White (1853-1906)
  Categories: Architects & Designers, Historians/Historical Accounts, Preservation
  
  Stanford White (1853-1906) found in Rhode Island the perfect social and natural setting for his artistic talents. In Stanford White, Rhode Island found the architectural genius that perfectly captured the spirit of its "Gilded Age". While one without the other would have been noteworthy, the combination truly exemplified one of the greatest epochs in American architecture.
  
  At the age of nineteen, Stanford White began an apprenticeship in the Boston office of Henry H. Read more >
- Alfred Mason Williams (1840-1896)
  Categories: Historians/Historical Accounts, Preservation, Literature / Writers / Newspapers
  
  Alfred Mason Williams (1840-1896), was born in Taunton, Massachusetts in 1840 and entered Brown University in 1856. Trouble with eyesight made him drop out after a couple of semesters. His eyesight did not keep him from volunteering in the 4th Massachusetts Regiment. He sent Civil War reports to his hometown paper and to Horace Greeley's New York Tribune. Read more >