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Wednesday, May 17, 2023

Remembering " Uncle Louie " - RIP

[ " Ruggieri Associates (Albert H Cooper Louis M Ruggieri) consulting eng 170 Westminster R510 " ] Taken from 1960 Providence City Directory . At that time -a more prosperous time for our " Uncle Louie " - Louis Ruggieri had his engineering office at 170 Westminster St., R 510 . His partner was one Mr. Albert H. Cooper . The story goes that there was some dishonest business practice on Cooper's part which ruined Uncle Louie's international engineering firm " Ruggieri& Associates " . I heard that Uncle Louie was a regular customer at the nearby Chinese Restaurant ( Mee Hong Restaurant 102 Westminster ? ) Also a regular hard drinker- this very talented man born and raised on Federal Hill in Providence , Rhode Island. When my 12 year old, older brother Ricky said he wanted to be an airplane pilot Uncle Louie sternly told him : " You have to know Calculus . Do YOU know Calculus? " One day Uncle Louie showed me a greenish , still radioactive mineral which was once just plain SAND transformed by the first Atomic Bomb test at Alamagordo , New Mexico. Later years when I protested the Vietnam War Uncle Louie called me " Un-American " . At that time he had some engineering contract in Vietnam ( along with a Vietnamese girl friend on the side. Which later led to a bitter divorce and ( sadly ) a possible suicide on the 4th of July ( liberation day ? ) [earlier Uncle Louie had a role in the North Providence town management .See above.] In his last year of life , now a broken man, Uncle Louie was often a dinner guest at our house and was loved and treated kindly by his younger brother , my father Domenic, and my mother Janet . RIP " Uncle Louie " now in a still a nameless , numbered grave at St. Ann's Catholic Cemetery in Cranston, Rhode Island.

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