NORTH PROVIDENCE – Thirty years ago, Dick Fossa waged a friendly little rivalry battle with Buddy Cianci to bring the president of Italy to his town instead of to Providence. Fossa won.
Fossa shared the story with The Local Insider during a chat at his home near Fatima Hospital about his most memorable experiences in 56 years of political service.
That visit from Italian President Oscar Luigi Scalfaro was one of the highlights of his time as North Providence’s chief executive, said Fossa, who was also previously a Town Council member and later chief of staff to Mayor Charles Lombardi before his retirement last year.
Buddy was crazy, Fossa recalls, laughing, but they got along well enough as mayors in adjoining communities.
“We had a different relationship,” he said, remembering how Cianci would refer to “that little town over there,” and Fossa would bust him up about something in return.
Fossa was friendly with former U.S. Rep. Patrick Kennedy, and knowing Kennedy wasn’t a particular fan of Cianci, a man Fossa described as “more of a Republican at the time,” Fossa said he approached his friend for help and have President Scalfaro visit the town of North Providence during his historic visit to the Ocean State.
“He came through and delivered,” Fossa said of Kennedy.
Scalfaro ended up coming to Rhode Island for his first official visit in early April 1996.
The Observer reported at the time that crowds showed up to North Providence High School 90 minutes before the 4:30 p.m. event, knowing that security would be heavy.
“When President Scalfaro appeared at center stage, the auditorium was engulfed in a sea of red, white, and green Italian flags, large and small,” read the story. President Scalfaro, having visited Washington, D.C. and New York City earlier in the week, appeared to be energized by such a sincere and enthusiastic outpouring from the crowd.”
“We had every Italian mayor there,” said Fossa. “They all came, and it was great.”
He said he only regretted that his mother and father couldn’t be there.
Before Scalfaro addressed the crowd, he received keys to the communities represented, including North Providence, Providence, Johnston, Cranston, North Smithfield, and Bristol. He responded that nothing expresses trust more than giving someone a key to their house or town, and it was a sign of the strong ties between Rhode Island and Italy.
Kennedy gave Scalfaro a bust of John F. Kennedy, a president Scalfaro remembered as fighting for the defenseless around the world.
“His warmest remarks, however, were reserved for the members of the audience, many of whom were born in Italy and emigrated to this country with their families earlier this century,” read the story. “Most of the people in the crowd did not need any translation to hear the president’s speech.”
“They came here with poverty, but they brought a great faith,” said the Italian president.
Scalfaro awarded Fossa with one of the highest and most prestigious civilian honours of the Italian Republic, Commendatore. He was given a citation and pin conferring “Commendatore,” or an honorary title for commander, that recognizes contributions to the nation in arts, literature, economy and public service.
Fossa laughed as he shared how “Commendatore” is also the title for Michael Corleone in the “Godfather” series.
Fossa said it was such a surreal day, with fellow countrymen separated only by great distance speaking Italian to each other. “I was speaking Italian to the president. Buddy didn’t know how to speak Italian,” he said, laughing. “It was the highlight of my time in office.”
Fossa will turn 90 years old this November, and he says he continues to take one year at a time.
Fossa shares that since retiring he has been busier than he’s ever been. Some of that has involved going through his decades’ worth of memorabilia from Coca-Cola, where he worked for nearly 40 years.
Much of the sports memorabilia he’s going through belonged to his son, the late Richard D. Fossa, who died in 2020. His son was a sports nut, he said, and a big collector.
“He saved every single stub he ever had,” he said of Richard, the former athletic director at North Kingstown High School.
His son was a Triple A umpire for the Pawtucket Red Sox who filled in at the major league level.
The former mayor, who had started in politics in 1973, ended up losing to A. Ralph Mollis by 57 votes after one four-year term in office in 1996. It just happened to coincide with the first year of mandated property revaluations, he recalls, and people at the time didn’t understand that the property rate would drop by an equal amount to the values going up, and they believed that a 25 percent increase in property value meant their taxes were going up by $300 or $400.
For Fossa, who never ended up finishing high school, “Coca-Cola saved my life.” He was 21 when he started working for the company. He ended up taking a buyout in 1992, at age 56, that gave him health coverage for life.
Fossa says he is grateful, thankful for a life that still continues to exceed the expectations of that boy who grew up as the youngest of eight children in a humble home in Providence.
