Inductees from 2015

 
  1. Charles C. Baldelli

    Charles C. Baldelli (1933-)

    Categories: Civic Leaders, Government & Politics

    Charles Celeste Baldelli was born on August 4, 1933 in Woonsocket, Rhode Island.  He and his brother, Dan, were the sons of Alesandro and Marina Baldelli. True to his native city, Charlie lives in the same house in which he was born. After attending public schools in Woonsocket, Charlie served in the army during the Korean War. Read more >

  2. Donald H. Bousquet

    Donald H. Bousquet (1948-)

    Categories: Artists & Painters, Literature / Writers / Newspapers

    Don Bousquet, who turned 67 this St. Patrick's Day, was born in Pawtucket, but his parents moved the family to South County where they both worked at the University of Rhode Island. One of seven children, Don attended Chariho High School where he met his wife, Laura. He went on to the University of Rhode Island to study anthropology. Read more >

  3. Walter E.

    Walter E. "Ted" Carter

    Categories: Military
    Burrillville native Vice Admiral Walter E. "Ted' Carter, Superintendent of the US Naval Academy, is one of the living giants of Naval aviation history.

    Carter flew 125 combat missions in Bosnia, Kosovo, Kuwait, Iraq and Afghanistan. Since earning his Naval Flight Officer wings in 1982, Admiral Carter, a record-setting "Top Gun" aviator, has made 2,016 "traps", or arrested landings on aircraft carriers–more than any other Naval aviator in history. Read more >

  4. Bowen R. Church

    Bowen R. Church (1860-1923)

    Categories: Historians/Historical Accounts, Preservation, Music (Singers, Composers)

    Bowen R. Church 1860-1923, founder of The American Band of Providence, one of the great symphonic brass bands of the late 19th century. Compared often with the U.S. Read more >

  5. Brigadier Gen. Herbert R. Dean (1882-1941)

    Categories: Civic Leaders, Historians/Historical Accounts, Preservation, Military
    Herbert R. Dean, 1882-1941, spent most of his long life in the military including duty in the cavalry during World War I, service as Adjutant General of the Rhode Island National Guard under four governors, and Director of the Selective Service Board for Rhode Island at the beginning of World War II. He was also scoutmaster of Rhode Island's first Boy Scout Troop.

    Herbert R. Read more >

  6. Judge Luigi DePasquale (1892-1958)

    Categories: Government & Politics, Historians/Historical Accounts, Preservation, Law / Legal Pioneers

    Judge Luigi DePasquale 1892-1958, exemplifies the rapid political, social, and economic rise of Rhode Island's first generation Italian-Americans. Born on December 13, 1892 in Providence to Italian immigrant parents, Antonio and Maria (Vitale) DePasquale, Luigi was raised in Milford, Massachusetts, where his father became an undertaker. He graduated from Boston University Law School in 1913 at the age of twenty. In 1914, Luigi returned to his native state to practice law. Read more >

  7. Mark Antony DeWolfe Howe (1864-1960)

    Categories: Literature / Writers / Newspapers

    Mark Antony DeWolfe Howe (1864-1960), a Bristolian and son of Bishop Mark Antony De Wolfe Howe, was a prolific author, poet and editor who won a Pulitzer Prize in biography. As a Boston resident, he became known as “the dean of Boston's literary world.”

    He served as associate editor of the Youth's Companion from 1888 to 1893 and from 1899 to 1913. Between 1893 and 1895, Howe was the assistant editor of the Atlantic Monthly and was also the Vice President of the Atlantic Monthly company from 1911 to 1929. Read more >

  8. George Patrick Duffy

    George Patrick Duffy (1922-2015)

    Categories: Founders of Rhode Island, Sports - Baseball, Sports - Other
    Normally sportscasters — with such notable excep- tions of Chris Schenkel and Chris Clark — do not gain accep- tance to the Rhode Island Heritage Hall of Fame, but if one is a sportscaster for seven decades, the voice of the Rhode Island Reds for a quarter-century, the longtime coach of youth sports in his community, a constant friend and supporter of disadvantaged and challenged children, and a Pawtucket civic leader, that per- son certainly qualifies. That per- son is George Patrick Duffy. George was born in Pa.wtucket in 1922, one of the seven children of Frederick and Emma (Locklin) Duffy. Read more >
  9. Wilfred I. Duphiney (1884-1960)

    Categories: Artists & Painters, Historians/Historical Accounts, Preservation

    Wilfred I. Duphiney, 1884-1960, Rhode Island's most prolific and most viewed portraitist of the Twentieth Century, was born in the mill village Central Falls in 1884.

    His public school education led to his enrollment in the Rhode Island School of Design where he eventually graduated to the faculty and taught at this prestigious art school for nearly forty years. His world was centered on College Hill--RISD, the Providence Art Club, the Providence Watercolor Club, and his studio near the Art Club in the Fleur-de-Lys House at 7 Thomas Street. Read more >

  10. John C. Fredriksen

    John C. Fredriksen (1953-2014)

    Categories: Literature / Writers / Newspapers

    John Fredriksen of Smithfield was born in 1953 at the Quonset Naval Air Station where his parents were stationed as members of the U.S. Navy.  The military life was a path John wanted to follow, but a lifelong battle with asthma prevented such a career. Read more >

  11. Mark Antony DeWolfe Howe (1864-1960)

    Categories: Historians/Historical Accounts, Preservation, Literature / Writers / Newspapers
    Mark Antony Dewolfe Howe, 1864-1960, was born on August 23, 1864 into one of Bristol's leading families. Mark was his father's seventeenth of eighteen children by three wives. After his prolific father and namesake became Episcopal bishop of central Pennsylvania, Mark enrolled at Lehigh University in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania where his father was chairman of the board of trustees. After graduation in 1886, Mark began the study of English Literature at Harvard University earning a master's degree in 1888. Read more >
  12. Gertrude I. Johnson

    Gertrude I. Johnson (1876-1961)

    Categories: Education & Universities, Historians/Historical Accounts, Preservation, Women

    Gertrude I. Johnson, 1876-1961, and Mary Tiffany Wales, 1874-1952, founding mothers of Johnson & Wales University. Mary Tiffany Wales was born in Wilmington, Delaware in 1874 and graduated from the Pennsylvania State Normal School at Millersville in 1893. Following graduation, Mary taught school, first in Pennsylvania and later in Massachusetts. Read more >

  13. U.S. Rep. Ambrose Kennedy

    U.S. Rep. Ambrose Kennedy (1875-1967)

    Categories: Government & Politics, Historians/Historical Accounts, Preservation, Law / Legal Pioneers, Literature / Writers / Newspapers

    U.S. Rep. Ambrose Kennedy, 1875-1967, Congressman Ambrose Kennedy was a rarity in early twentieth century Rhode Island politics--a devout Irish Catholic Republican politician of high standing. Read more >

  14. Margaret A. McKenna

    Margaret A. McKenna (1945-)

    Categories: Education & Universities, Philanthropists

    Margaret McKenna was born in Providence, Rhode Island in 1945 to parents who were lifelong teachers and administrators in the Central Falls public school system. Her father was in the first graduating class at Providence College, and her mother was a graduate of Rhode Island College. Margaret attended Holy Trinity Elementary School in Central Falls and Sacred Heart High School in Pawtucket.  She then received degrees from Emmanuel College and Southern Methodist University School of Law. Read more >

  15. Alexander Meiklejohn

    Alexander Meiklejohn (1872-1964)

    Categories: Education & Universities, Government & Politics, Historians/Historical Accounts, Preservation

    Alexander Meiklejohn, 1872-1964, Alexander Meiklejohn was a most unusual man, a dissenter in the mode of Roger Williams! He came to Rhode Island in 1880, when he was eight years old, the youngest son of a Scottish working class family. After a brief stay in Warwick, Alexander moved with his family to Pawtucket where he grew to manhood. He said of himself that he was brought up on the bible and “Bobbie” Burns, with an emphasis on the latter! His formal education came at Brown University where he studied, and later taught philosophy. A loyal alum he came back often to Brown from the various pursuits of his long life. Read more >

  16. John Red Pollard

    John Red Pollard (1909-1981)

    Categories: Historians/Historical Accounts, Preservation, Sports - Other

    John "Red" Pollard, 1909-1981: Although he was the grandson of Irish immigrants, John “Red” Pollard was born into affluence. Unfortunately a flood in 1915 devastated the family business--a brickyard--and left the six-year old impoverished. As a teenager, he decided to become a professional jockey.

    Though considered too tall at a “towering” 5 feet, 6 inches, Pollard left his home in Edmonton, Canada to pursue his dream. Read more >

  17. Anthony Quinn

    Anthony Quinn (1915-2011)

    Categories: Theater, TV & Radio

    Anthony Quinn was born in Chihuahua, Mexico in April 1915 during the Mexican Revolution to a Mexican-Indian mother, Manuela Oaxaca, and a half-Irish father, Francesco, or Frank, whose father had immigrated from Cork, Ireland to work for the Union Pacific Railroad. When Anthony was only eight months old, his mother hid him in a coal wagon and escaped to El Paso, Texas. His father, a soldier for Pancho Villa, found them later. Poverty led the Quinns to search for work as fruit pickers in California. Read more >

  18. Henry Shelton

    Henry Shelton

    Categories: Civic Leaders, Religion & Churches

    Henry Shelton grew up in Central Falls and started his activist career as a Catholic priest. He felt warmth and achievement with worshipers at a couple of different parishes, most notably St. Michael's Parish in South Providence, but he required greater freedom and mobility to tackle the larger issues that affected peoples' lives. He soon realized he had a larger ministry: to embrace the poor and disinherited inhabitants of the state, regardless of religion or any other status. Read more >

  19. Noreen Stonor Drexel

    Noreen Stonor Drexel (1922-2012)

    Categories: Education & Universities, Medicine & Health Care, Women
    When Noreen Stonor Drexel accepted her Honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters from Salve Regina in 1999, she made a confession: She had never been to school. And she meant never. As a girl at her family's ancestral estate of Stonor Park in Oxfordshire, England, she had jumped on a horse and ridden away whenever she spotted the dust cloud of her tutor approaching —riding so much, in fact, that she came became a potential Olympic level equestrian.

    Oddly, her lack of a formal education made her a strong advocate of public schools. Read more >

  20. George R.

    George R. "Birdie" Tebbets (1912-1999)

    Categories: Historians/Historical Accounts, Preservation, Sports - Baseball

    George R. "Birdie" Tebbetts, 1912–1999: Raised in New Hampshire, “Birdie” Tebbetts was a precocious, intelligent, and athletic youngster who served as the team mascot for the “Nashua Millionaires,” an independent semi-professional team owned by the future New Hampshire Governor, Francis Parnell Murphy.

    Murphy encouraged young Tebbetts to aim high. Tebbetts did just that, becoming an All-State High School quarterback and a star baseball catcher. Read more >

  21. Mary T. Wales (1874-1952)

    Categories: Education & Universities, Historians/Historical Accounts, Preservation, Women

    Gertrude I. Johnson, 1876-1961, and Mary Tiffany Wales, 1874-1952, founding mothers of Johnson & Wales University. Mary Tiffany Wales was born in Wilmington, Delaware in 1874 and graduated from the Pennsylvania State Normal School at Millersville in 1893. Following graduation, Mary taught school, first in Pennsylvania and later in Massachusetts. Read more >

  22. H. Philip West, Jr.

    H. Philip West, Jr.

    Categories: Civic Leaders, Law / Legal Pioneers, Literature / Writers / Newspapers

    A native of Brooklyn, New York, Phil West graduated from Hamilton College in Clinton, New York in 1963 as an honors major in English Literature. He entered the prestigious Union Theological Seminary from which he received a masters of divinity degree in 1967 with a year of research at Cambridge University in England, the alma mater of Roger Williams. That research resulted in his first scholarly article, published in the Journal of New Testament Studies. For the next two decades he served as a pastor or director at United Methodist churches in New York and Connecticut. Read more >

 

 

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