Kathy Poirier and her husband have owned the Heritage Coffee Shoppe & Restaurant on Main Street in downtown Woonsocket for four-and-a-half years.
They’ve got a terrific location for a coffee shop.
Woonsocket City Hall (where Abraham Lincoln once spoke in 1860) is just down the street, as is a state Division of Motor Vehicles office and Woonsocket’s daily newspaper, The Call.
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Most of the customers are regulars. Kathy Poirier knows them by name. She knows what time to expect them – and how they take their coffee.
One regular stopped coming not so long ago, after he had moved into a nursing home. And not long after that, when word came that he had died, it left a real void.
“They become like family,” said Poirier.
But that’s Woonsocket. It’s more Bruce Springsteen than Britney Spears. It’s substance over style.
As I drove around Woonsocket last Sunday morning, you could see that substance. There are a lot of churches. And yard sales seem popular.
There are big Colonial homes with spacious yards in some neighborhoods, triple-deckers in others. On Main Street, in an area called Market Square, there’s lots of red, white and blue. Some of that, I guess, is there to commemorate the Fourth of July holiday, but I get the impression that most of it is up year-round.
I saw a lot of Red Sox caps, too. To me, that also speaks of loyalty – tradition.
A banner downtown reminds visitors that Woonsocket “Proudly Supports Our Troops.”
There are in fact lots of small signs throughout Woonsocket, designating villages
like Globe and Hamlet. The signs all read: “A Mill Village.”
Farmers and millers
According to a community profile of the city from the Rhode Island Economic Development Corporation: “The area known as Woonsocket was first settled in the late 17th century. The early settlers farmed the land and took advantage of the power supplied by Woonsocket Falls. The city’s abundant waterpower was a significant factor determining the development of Woonsocket, which was mainly industrial. From the time it was first settled until nearly a hundred years later, Woonsocket was a quiet backwoods region inhabited by Quaker farmers and millers.”
The profile goes on to point out that between 1810 and 1830, six manufacturing villages sprang up and settlers arrived from nearby towns and states and from Europe to make a living there.
Today, manufacturing and the old mills remain a major part of the Woonsocket economy.
On Thursday afternoon, June 26, a devastating fire – believed to have sparked by a downed electrical transformer – ripped through three buildings in a four-acre mill complex between Florence Drive and Morton Avenue.
Nearly 60 second-shift workers at ACS Industries Inc., a manufacturer of knitted wire products, were safely evacuated. A couple of other smaller businesses were also destroyed.
Firefighters from nearly 20 other communities joined to battle the blaze, which burned well into that evening.
Remarkably, no one was hurt.
On Friday morning, ACS workers started showing up for their 7 a.m. shift, only to find their workplace in ruins. While company officials could not say for sure what would become of the company in the days after the fire (according to city officials, there are a couple of buildings in front of the mill complex that the company owns and they were apparently not damaged) some 270 workers could be displaced.
The state Department of Labor and Training was on the scene quickly, setting up a call center so that workers could file unemployment claims. Gov. Don Carcieri issued a statement the day after the fire saying he has directed the labor and training department to “ensure that workers at affected businesses received the assistance to which they are entitled in an efficient, timely manner.”
There is also talk that some neighboring companies are offering jobs to workers put out on the street by the fire.
That’s the sort of community spirit that Donald Stewart has become accustomed to since moving to Woonsocket a few years ago.
I met Stewart on Sunday morning outside of his apartment, about a quarter-mile from the burnt-out mill. The smell of charred wood hung in the air as we spoke.
Stewart said he used a pair of binoculars to watch the fire unfold from his second-floor balcony.
“The fire scene was horrific,” he said. “Those 55-gallon drums were flying up in the air. The roads were shut down. I heard there was ash miles away.”
Stewart was worried that night. Not so much for himself, but for neighbors.
Everyone sort of keeps an eye out for one another, he said.
That’s why Stewart isn’t surprised that so many folks have stepped forward to try and help those people put out by the fire.
“Those people didn’t ask to be put out of work,” said Stewart. “Why should they have to go on welfare or food stamps? It’s nice if these other companies help out and try to pick them up.”
It is nice.
And in Woonsocket, it doesn’t come as much of a surprise.
