Above: The Class of 1971 at their "50ish" reunion Thursday night. Photo by Stan Strembicki That was the Rhode Island Pendulum headline 47 years ago this month, detailing the sheer bizarreness of a bunch of East Greenwich High School kids attending their fifth — their...
The East Greenwich High School Class of 1971 graduated 52 years ago on June 15. We’re holding our 50th reunion in August. Blame the delay on Covid-19(71). Anyway, it’s in keeping with our history: the brand-new East Greenwich High School wasn’t ready for us when we...
No one who witnessed it will ever forget it. That would be the East Greenwich Tercentenary Parade, celebrating the town’s 300th birthday, on July 31, 1977. Some 100,000 people crowded along Route 1 and Main Street. Townsfolk and tourists stretched from the North...
Nearly 40 years ago, local notables Robert Allen Greene, Steve Greene and Elmer Palmer helped to recreate the Bourbonnais Regiment that fought the final battle of the American Revolution. A pair of them posed at the foot of the Appomattox memorial in Alexandria,...
Above: The Kentish Guards atop a Middle Road hill on a Memorial Day more than a half-century ago. An afternoon more than a half-century ago left its mark By Mark Thompson My brothers and I were thunderstruck. Soldiers were climbing up a hill from Middle Road, next to...
Above: That’s Mike Lenihan, with the beard, in the reviewing stand for the East Greenwich Tercentenary Parade in July 1977. He’s sitting next to East Greenwich GOP town councilor and grand dame Marion Fry, and flanked by GOP town councilor Lew Thompson (left) and...
By Mark Thompson “What’s so funny, Mr. Thompson?” That was my introduction to Louis (did anyone ever call him that in the 65 years since he arrived in East Greenwich?) Lepry and it came during my first days in 7th grade in September, 1965. I hadn’t actually “met” him...
By Mark Thompson It’s the kind of one-two punch that wakes up even the soundest sleeper. “Fire!” shouted with an urgency from down the stairs of your rambling, all-wood apartment house, followed an instant later by the unmistakable smell of smoke. I’ll never forget...
Longtime EGHS disciplinarian was both loved and loathed By Mark Thompson If you think the internecine town-government battle now roiling East Greenwich is unprecedented, you weren’t around when Domenic Iannazzi became the lightning rod that polarized the town for more...
Good for grownups, great for kids. In four months, there’ll be a new—and sad—phrase often heard in East Greenwich. For that matter, you’ll hear it echoing across Rhode Island and southeastern New England, too: “Where Benny’s used to be.” East Greenwich is one of those...
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