There’s no getting the country out of this city boy

By John Howell
Posted 12/29/15

Bill Ruggieri has always been agile. As a kid he could do flips and while not a heavyweight he was a valuable member of the Aldrich High School football team.

It almost didn’t turn out that …

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There’s no getting the country out of this city boy

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Bill Ruggieri has always been agile. As a kid he could do flips and while not a heavyweight he was a valuable member of the Aldrich High School football team.

It almost didn’t turn out that way. Ruggieri’s father pulled him out of public school.

“Being an altar boy, he thought I should go to LaSalle,” said Ruggieri.

He attended LaSalle for a year and returned to Aldrich. He made the football team but during the first game of the season broke a leg. He was back as a senior, playing safety and proud that not a single point was scored against the team in eight games.

Maybe those days on the gridiron explain why at 80 years old – Ruggieri celebrated his birthday Dec. 4 – he’s bounding up ladders and scampering across roofs like a 20-year-old.

Little seems to hold Ruggieri back. He loves a good story and is willing to take on virtually any project. Can he build a chicken coop? Well, of course. How about an outhouse? Well, he’s done that, too, although it was an ornamental structure that Buddy Bassett had on his property in Oakland Beach. Bassett had a Santa mannequin seated in it for Christmas.

But it’s barns that Ruggieri is renowned for. They’re little barns, although he’s built them large enough to call a garage. You’ll see them if you turn down Alfred Street off Sandy Lane.

Of course, in urban Rhode Island there’s not much need for barns, even small ones that could accommodate goats and sheep. So, they aren’t called barns around here, but rather sheds.

RELCO Barns has been a part of Warwick for decades. RELCO is actually the name of Ruggieri’s first business – Ruggieri Electric Company – and he never bothered changing it when he picked up a hammer and a saw. He still carries a screwdriver and wire cutter and does electrical jobs.

Ruggieri grew up in Warwick and was one of 10 children. He remembers the farms and how they gave way for the housing and shopping plazas that made Warwick one of the fastest growing cities in the country at one point. He’s never lost his fondness for open space.

“There’s something about the country that I love,” he says.

His father, James, worked for the UER, (United Electric Railway), and drove a bus. His father had an interest in politics and ran against Joe Mills for state representative. James lost the contest and Mills went on to become a mayor of Warwick. After high school, Bill signed up with the Air National Guard. He was trained as an aircraft electrician and was stationed with the unit at “Hillsgrove,” the name of the airport before it was named for Senator Theodore Francis Green. He was interested in flying and took lessons with a flying club that was part of the guard. The lessons came to an end when the plane was lost in Hurricane Carol.

“So I took up water skiing.”

Ruggieri joined the Kent Water Ski Club. Water skiing was the rage at the time, and Bill was good at it. He remembers doing shows off Oakland Beach for admiring crowds on the shoreline. As a paying job, Bill worked for Al Greenblatt as an electrician, starting in 1953. Greenblatt owned the first Dunkin Donuts in the country on North Main Street in Providence. The second was at the Gateway Shopping Plaza at Hoxsie. Bill did the wiring for the coffee shops and then went on to do the wiring for gasoline service stations and the electrical services of pumps regionally.

As he tells the story, he was working for Amoco Oil in Connecticut repairing gasoline pumps when he spotted a cute little red barn. Ruggieri thought he could build one. It launched a business.

“We knew we had a need for sheds,” quips Ruggieri’s son Bill, who is now working the business, “we have so much stuff.”

Young Bill, who completed the construction trades program at the Warwick Area Career and Technical Center, stepped into the business a couple of years ago at a point where his father was seriously thinking of giving it up, although he couldn’t imagine what he would do in retirement. The Rhode Island Airport Corporation had offered to buy the building and use it as a center for its home sound program. The money was good and Ruggieri was tempted, but he just wasn’t happy with the thought of so much time on his hands.

Ruggieri estimates the company sells from 40 to 50 sheds a year. Not all of them are built by the Ruggieris. RELCO is a broker for barns built in Pennsylvania by the Amish-owned company Lapp Structures of New Holland. Lapp offers a wide selection of models, more like oversized dollhouses with sloped roofs and shuttered windows than what would be called a shed or barn.

About 10 years ago Ruggieri got a scare when his doctor told him he had prostate cancer. The diagnosis wasn’t good and he was being advised to straighten out his affairs.

Ruggieri read every book and article he could find on prostate cancer and established his own treatment plan, borrowing from the advice of many. He went on a diet, losing about 30 pounds, and took a variety of herbal medications. He doesn’t know if he has the cancer today, but he’s feeling fine.

“I had some help from above,” he says.

Steve Delory, who has worked off and on with the Ruggieris for years (he worked with Bill’s brother Tom, who started the Cowesett Inn and was the chef for many years at the Governor Francis Inn), is amazed by Bill’s energy.

“He’s always up on a ladder, banging nails, working,” he said.

Delory’s theory is that Bill gravitated to building barns because there’s little to show for electrical work.

“You do an electrical job and people don’t think it’s that much,” he said.

On the other hand, if they order a barn and then see it take shape, that’s a different matter.

But then, it could be as simple as Bill loves building things. At 80, there’s no sign he’s going to slow down either.

Comments

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  • Partymonster

    When was there a DD in the Gateway?

    Wednesday, December 30, 2015 Report this

  • warwick10

    In the 60's?

    Wednesday, December 30, 2015 Report this

  • Justanidiot

    It was way before that, probably the 20's or 30's. If not older

    Wednesday, December 30, 2015 Report this