The Rhode Island Publications Society Observes Its 50th Birthday, 1974–2024
The Rhode Island Publications Society (“RIPS”) celebrates its 50th anniversary this year (2024). During that span it has published or co-published more than 130 volumes on various aspects of Rhode Island history and heritage and distributed the books of several local historical societies, the Rhode Island Historical Preservation and Heritage Commission, the Rhode Island Historical Society, and the Diocese of Providence. In addition, it has disseminated books about the state produced by university presses and commercial publishers.
RIPS had its origins in 1974 as the Publications Committee of the Rhode Island Bicentennial [of Independence] Commission (“ri76”). As Commission chairman, I created this committee as one of 57 boards designed to provide greater awareness of Rhode Island’s Revolutionary heritage and to encourage widespread public participation in the celebration of American independence. I appointed historians Glen LaFantasie, since made an honorary fellow of the Rhode Island Historical Society, and Paul R. Campbell, former Providence city archivist, to direct the publications program of ri76.
After the observance came to a close, he kept the Publications Committee in operation; expanded its scope to include all aspects of Rhode Island history; retained Dr. Hilliard Beller, a meticulous editor; persuaded Gail Cahalan to serve as volunteer office manager; incorporated the Society as a Rhode Island non-profit business organization; and secured for RIPS a 501(c)(3) designation from the U.S. Internal Revenue Service.
The first major task of RIPS in its expanded role was the distribution of numerous titles published in previous decades by the Rhode Island Historical Society. In this successfully completed project, RIPS worked closely with the late Al Klyberg, historical society director and a board member of RIPS. During these early years, when small local bookstores were numerous, Ron Tracey and then Pat Conley, Jr., styling himself “Willie Loman,” went around the state peddling books as sales representatives of RIPS. Colleen Conley assumed this task a decade later with great tenacity.
In the ensuing years RIPS published a constant stream of books including several to coincide with such statewide observances as the 350th anniversary of the founding of Rhode Island (1986), the bicentennial of the U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights (1987–91), the bicentennial of Rhode Island statehood (1990), and the sesquicentennial of the state’s famed Dorr Rebellion (1992). During our 50-year effort, secretaries Phyllis Cardullo, Linda Gallen, and Anna Loiselle handled the typing chores on nearly all of RIPS’ publications.
In 2006, the Society acquired a prominent location in a National Historic Register building (Conley’s Wharf) at 200 Allens Avenue in Providence where it shared space with the Rhode Island Heritage Hall of Fame and the Heritage Harbor Museum Corporation. Its spacious headquarters prompted RIPS to inaugurate an outreach program whereby it created a d/b/a called The Fabre Line Club — so named because of the proximity of its headquarters to State Pier No. 1, where the trans-Atlantic Fabre Line brought 84,000 immigrants to the Port of Providence from 1913 to 1934.
The Fabre Line Club, led by Pat and Gail Conley, eventually reached a membership (paid and honorary) of 424, including two recipients of the Pulitzer Prize in History (Gordon Wood and Jack Rakove), and a recipient of the Bancroft Prize in History (Jim Patterson). In addition, the club attracted a wide array of other community leaders — clergy, judges, lawyers, physicians, government officials, generals, business persons, academicians, journalists, and authors. For one brief shining moment the club and the Publications Society flourished.
During its seven years of operation (2007–13) the Fabre Line Club, under my presidency, sponsored 60 book presentations, including a dozen of its own productions; held 60 public lectures; staged 14 exhibits and video presentations on local history; and conducted eight narrated historic tours of Providence harbor aboard the 49-passenger Providence Piers tour boat (which now graces Boston’s harbor).
Over that span of seven years, the club and its chefs served nearly 40 lavish ethnic heritage buffets beginning with a St. Patrick’s Day feast in 2007. Most of these elaborate meals featured the cuisine of those countries that sent large numbers of immigrants to Rhode Island — and it did not overlook the Native Americans in presenting these sumptuous cultural events. In furtherance of its theme of ethnocultural diversity, Gail decorated its annual Christmas tree with the flags of the 12 actual or emergent nations that sent immigrants to the port of Providence aboard the Fabre Line.
The club closed at the end of 2013 with a ceremony celebrating the publication of a book entitled Aboard the Fabre Line to Providence, written by Dr. William Jennings and myself, detailing the history of the Fabre Line and Rhode Island’s own Ellis Island at State Pier No. 1.
The literal scrapping of that adjacent historic site was a major factor in the Fabre Line Club’s demise. The immigrant landing station has become a toxic facility for the large-scale export of scrap metal, and then salt was rubbed into our wounds on the adjacent lot that we had used for events.
In 2016, following the loss of its Providence headquarters on Allens Avenue due to a successful but corrupt campaign to block rezoning of the Providence waterfront to mixed use, RIPS persevered.
RIPS moved to the East Bay Office Park at 1445 Wampanoag Trail, East Providence where its book inventory was stored and acquired an office in that building courtesy of its new financial backer, the Heritage Harbor Foundation. RIPS united there with the Rhode Island Heritage Hall of Fame to form an association of non-profit cultural corporations named Clio’s Trio by me after the muse of History.
At its new (and hopefully final location) RIPS greatly expanded its publication program led by director Russ DeSimone, who was also treasurer of the Heritage Harbor Foundation. Others who contributed to this expansion, transformation, and resurgence include the long-time book designer Cliff Garber of Lynn, Massachusetts, Kevin Sheahan of Sheahan Printing of Woonsocket, copy-editor and indexer Dr. Heather Dubnick, historians Christian McBurney and Ken Dooley, publicist Michael Levesque, distribution managers Joseph Morris and Doreen Schwartz, Providence city archivist Caleb Horton, photographer Richard McCaffrey, accountant Scott Whittum, and office manager Donna Faiza. This team has combined to make RIPS more viable and productive at 50 than it ever has been.
On each of the Society’s ten-year observances, from 1984 onward, it features a decennial book. The first such publication was Firefighters and Fires in Providence, a history of that historic department from its origins in 1754 by me and Paul Campbell.
This anniversary’s decennial volume is The Valley of the Blackstone: Its People and Their Mill Villages by Albert T Klyberg, a detailed history of Rhode Island’s great industrial waterway by a prominent historian and RIPS director who lived along its banks.
With the ongoing support of the Heritage Harbor Foundation the productive future of the Rhode Island Publications Society is assured. Three more volumes will be completed by the end of this 50th year including another Blackstone Valley book, namely a fascinating insider biography of Thomas P. McCoy, legendary Pawtucket mayor, who is a prototypical example of a productive urban machine politician. Its author, Dr. William Jennings, was a longtime teacher at Central Falls High School and St. Raphael Academy, and a native of the Valley.
Dr. Patrick T. Conley
Founding Chairman
Rhode Island Publications Society
You may order our publications in our
online bookstore, https://ripublications.org/rips-store/
or you may telephone our office at 401–272–1776,
fax your order to 401–273–1791, or mail your order to:
The Rhode Island Publications Society
1445 Wampanoag Trail, Suite #203
East Providence, RI 02915
