[We're here at Ciro's restaurant. It's October 16th and we are speaking with
John W. who is going to share his Woonsocket story. Could you tell us about a favorite
memory or memories of your life in Woonsocket?] I'd have to say my favorite
memories are when I was younger growing up in East Woonsocket. Two parts to that,
one is being from a large family, one of ten. A lot of what we did revolved
around ourselves because we were like a group of friends all in one household.
But in terms of place, the most important place for us, we lived on Mendon Road and
where I grew up mostly on Mendon Road, and everything as children revolved around
going to Cass Park and everything we needed was there. We had the playground.
We had the ball fields. We had, as a matter of fact, one of the slopes from
the upper area to the lower area had no trees so it was a perfect place to go
sledding in wintertime. You could do any activity you wanted there and
if you were adventurous and actually went up on the hill near the
Quonset huts, you would see that originally when it was designed it had
fireplaces and picnic tables so that families could gather there and have
picnics and cookouts out there in the park, much the same way that they had
them up at Diamond Hill Park. And I think so, I have to say that Cass Park was the
center of everything for us except, you know, when you go riding your bike you
might go outside of that area, but that was really the focal point for us
to do everything we needed to do growing up. [Okay, thank you.]
[What do you like about living in Woonsocket?] What I like about living in Woonsocket is the quiet.
I live in a nice neighborhood. It's quiet up in Bernon Heights. It's affordable. It's
nice neighbors. We have, you know you can develop relationships with the people
you live amongst, and I think that the feeling or sense of a neighborhood
still exists in certain parts of the city and I happen to be fortunate enough live
in one of those sections. So, I would say that's really the thing that I
like most about is that feeling of neighborliness that comes with that area of the city. [Okay, great.]
[What do you find challenging about living here?] The challenge to living
here is, I think, watching Woonsocket try to transition to something I
don't think as a city we've identified quite yet. We all know what our history
is, or was, and many people take great pride in
where we've come from, and that's a good thing. But I don't think we have a firm
grasp of what it is we want to be in the next 20, 30, or 40 years, and I think the
challenge is in listening to folks talk about these things. Many people want to
go off in many directions and there are many people who have differing views of
what to do with the downtown, or what to do with the Diamond Hill Road section
of the city. There's a lot of economic challenges to the city that need to be
addressed, and so the challenge, I think, is trying to recognize an identity to
the city and decide what it is we're going to become, whether it's more of a
residential or more urbanized, or find some blend that works with some sound
economic base. That's a difficult challenge for us. [Okay]
[What would you do to change Woonsocket?] I think if I could do anything,
it would be taking certain parts of the city to create, what I would consider, an entrance to
Woonsocket. We've never been connected to the major
highway systems and so we've tended to develop an island quality to us, where
everything goes by us or around us, and there is no main road coming into the
city. And what I think of when I think of a way to get into the city of the future
would be changing Cumberland Hill Road to be an extension of route 99 more so
that would have more highway quality to it. It would have to require widening it
significantly so that as you came into the city and you came into the Hamlet Avenue
Bridge area, you would be literally entering the city and you could go this
way to a commercial area, you could go this left to a governmental area, and it
would bring you here. Right now I don't see us having an entrance, a
place for people to identify as the way to get to Woonsocket, to be there for the
Stadium Theater, the library, the Museum of Work and Culture, or St Ann's. It's not
it's not that easy to do or identify. So, if I could change anything, I would strip out
Diamond Hill Road, I mean Cumberland Hill Road, and I would turn it into a major
thoroughfare that would be the entrance to Woonsocket, RI.
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