Raymond Paul Freitas

Raymond Paul Freitas was born on January 31, 1938 in Bristol, RI, to Manuel and Mary Freitas. He grew up amid Bristol’s large Portuguese community and loved eating fresh malasadas and sweetbread. As a teenager, he helped his father, a carpenter, build their family’s first house on Colonial Road, with its wooden porch swing out front. As a young man he loved playing sports, collecting baseball cards, and he dreamed of going to college. When college didn’t work out, Raymond got a job doing fire protection design. Back then all you needed for the field was a good head for math, and Raymond had a great one of those—he was naturally gifted with numbers and loved to do all the calculations in his head. During his early twenties while leading a local church group, he met a nice young Italian woman, Concetta (Connie) Lucia Goglia. They began dating, and just before Ray shipped off to Germany to serve during the Berlin Wall Crisis, they got engaged. They married on July 4th, 1959, upon his return home to the U.S., in a big Italian wedding thrown by Connie’s family. The young couple set up in a small apartment in East Providence, but soon moved to Seekonk, Massachusetts, where Ray’s mother-in-law, Amalia (Molly) Goglia, lived across the street. Thus began many years of Ray good naturedly driving his mother-in-law crazy with his humor and benign practical jokes. Molly soon pronounced Ray a “hot ticket” and he lived up to this title as often as he could manage. Both Molly and Connie got to work feeding Ray all his Italian favorites, which numbered in the many, but meatballs might have been top of the list. Or maybe the chicken cutlets. Ray always loved a good chicken parm. After more than a decade of trying to have a child without success, Ray and Connie began the adoption process, only to find out they were pregnant. On October 5, 1972, they welcomed their only child into the world, a girl they named Donna Marie. Shortly after her birth, they moved their tiny family down to Narragansett, RI (Saunderstown), to be close to the beach, and where Ray would live most of the rest of his life. They brought Molly along to live with them, so Ray could continue to drive her crazy and enjoy her cooking. He would also continue to work in Fire Protection, while his wife worked as a nursery school teacher. Ray was the best dad in the whole world, according to Donna. When Donna was young, Ray always made time for her, whether it was spending hours on the floor building cities and cars with LEGOS, playing catch in the backyard, or making dribble castles in the wet sand at Bonnet Shores Beach in Narragansett. Ray taught his daughter the importance of reading the newspaper, the value of hard work, and to believe in herself, among so many other things. Ray and his wife, Connie, loved each other very much and they also loved the beach at Bonnet. They spent every possible minute there in their favorite spot on the sand, and Ray especially loved to meet his wife and daughter at Bonnet after work during summer evenings, picking up pizza to eat for dinner on his way. They would often stay until dark, and he loved to go swimming right after he ate his pizza, even though he was warned this was not the best idea. Ray was a devoted sports fan his entire life—he loved the Patriots and the Red Sox, and good naturedly suffered their many decades of losing seasons. Most of all, Ray loved University of Rhode Island (URI) Basketball, and spent years supporting the team in various ways, including as president of the booster club. He held seasons’ tickets for years and tried to go to away games whenever he could. There was even a small dent in the railing in front of Ray’s seat from him pounding it regularly when he got annoyed with the refs, to the great amusement of Connie, Molly, and Donna, who always accompanied him to games. Ray was inducted into the URI Athletic Hall of Fame in the 1990’s and given an honorary degree for his incredible devotion and support of all URI’s sports teams. Ray passed along his sports-related commitments to his family, which included never ever leaving a game early, not even if your team is losing by a thousand, and to never be a fair weather fan, even if your team loses every game, every season. He also passed on his very potent sports-related superstitions to his daughter, who to this day tries to organize the whereabouts of everyone in the room toward the end of making the basketball go in the net, especially during foul shots. Ray was often known to wear his URI basketball jacket all weekend before an important game because obviously this would help them to prevail on the court. He was never happier than when URI beat Providence College (PC) in their annual rival game. A dream of Ray’s was for his daughter to get the college education he never did, and he was so happy when she went off to Georgetown University, despite hating their basketball team. The only team he disliked more than Georgetown, he told his daughter, was PC. While there, she continued to cause him dismay by choosing to major in Philosophy instead of Accounting, and after graduating, going on to get a Ph.D., also in a philosophy-related area, which Ray felt was not a recipe for financial stability or ongoing health care. Despite all of the above, Ray continued to love Donna very much, and came to all of her graduations with a big smile on his face. He even managed to refrain from commenting on her questionable career moves while she was living in a converted walk-in closet because that was all she could afford—that’s how much he loved and tolerated his daughter’s choices. Meanwhile, Connie and Ray lived a quiet life in Narragansett among kind neighbors, fellow devout URI fans, and friends from Bonnet Beach. Ray thought Connie was the best teacher, the best cook, and the best human to ever have lived. He loved taking her for ice cream at Brickley’s during warm summer evenings, and they enjoyed going out for Italian food on Friday nights. Connie was the love of Ray’s life, and they were married for nearly 45 years. She died of complications from late stage ovarian cancer on June 4th, 2004. Ray and his daughter spread her ashes together at Bonnet. Soon after Ray lost his wife, Ray got a new job at Cintas Fire Protection in Pawtucket, MA, and would travel RI and Southern Mass visiting construction sites, and bidding new jobs, and he always carried a hard hat in his trunk. Ray’s coworkers at Cintas appreciated his lifetime of knowledge about fire protection, his dedication to his job, and his quirky personality. Ray loved the people at Cintas, too, especially the very patient individuals who would help him with his technological troubles. Ray never used a computer for what could still be done in person, and still paid most of his bills by writing a check and driving to various utility offices or the town hall, to hand deliver it. After Connie died, Ray and his daughter began talking on the phone every day, sometimes more than once. They talked about mostly ordinary things—the weather, the Patriots, URI’s potential for a winning or losing season, her workout classes and her various projects. Ray always asked about Donna’s friends by name. He loved to tell Donna about what he was eating for lunch and it usually involved pepperoni. Or bacon. Sometimes in the same sandwich. His favorite food was anything with extra, extra pepperoni, hold all the vegetables. Ray always answered the phone when his daughter called with an enthusiastic, “Hi Sweetheart!” and loved referring to himself in the third person. He was known to begin sentences like, “Well, Your Dad thinks X,” but most often would say things like, “Your Dad loves you, Sweetheart.” When Ray was helping Donna through a difficult divorce, he would listen to her cry over the phone as long as she needed, all the while reminding her that, “Your Dad is still here, Sweetheart. Your Dad isn’t going anywhere.” Despite Ray’s early misgivings about Donna’s career, he came around to her graduate work, and to her eventual career as a writer of books. Though Ray never read even one of them, he loved hearing about each new book deal, and never refrained from telling Donna how proud he was that she’d become a writer. Ray was so happy when Donna got remarried. He welcomed his new, Chilean, Spanish-speaking son-in-law, Daniel, with open arms and lots of Jameson. Even after Ray’s long and wonderful love story with his wife, Connie, there was still love ahead in Ray’s future. After several years of dating half of age-appropriate Rhode Island, in 2010 he fell in love with Lori A. Meersman, the daughter of a friend. Soon Lori became his live-in-partner at his apartment down by Narragansett Beach. Ray and Lori loved enjoying cocktails together in the evening and taking trips to the Caribbean during the winter to all-inclusive resorts. Ray did love those all-inclusive wrist bands. He admired so many things about Lori—how hard she worked, her love of horses, her endless energy, and Lori’s devotion to her family, especially her daughter Lydia, and Lydia’s children, who sometimes came to stay with Ray and Lori at their house. Ray and Lori also loved to go up to New Hampshire to stay at The White Mountain Inn, and they held a shared love for the Patriots and looked forward to watching the games together all throughout football season. And boy did Ray love Tom Brady—even after he went to Tampa. He loved the Gronk, too. Ray spent a large part of the last years of his life at The Mariner Grille in Narragansett, often with Lori at his side, hanging out with the regulars, and the longtime bartender there, Michael. Ray always preferred to sit at the bar rather than at a table. “They always know just the way I like it,” Ray was known to often say, in reference to how they made his favorite cocktail (a Ketel One Martini), and his various sandwich orders which were layered with pork products that likely shouldn’t be eaten together. With cheese. Ray and Lori were together for 12 years, and Lori cared for him, day in and day out, during his final weeks as he struggled with the cancer that ended his life. Ray passed away early in the morning on May 27th, 2022 at South County Hospital, with both Donna and Lori at his bedside. He was still employed at Cintas when he died. Now that Ray is gone, Donna has continued to talk to her dad, out loud, every day, about all kinds of things. She plans to continue this practice on a regular basis, when she is walking down the street or making the bed at home or driving in the car, or just whenever she feels like it. She hopes with her whole heart that her father can hear her. A day is not complete for Donna without a conversation with her Dad, who was the bright and kind and so very decent center of her world—as she was his. Because, as mentioned earlier, he was the best dad ever. Ray is survived by his daughter, Donna, her husband, Daniel (Matus), his partner Lori, Lori’s daughter and son-in-law, Lydia and David Crehan, and their five children. His ashes will soon join Connie’s at the beach, and some will be taken by Lori up to a favorite spot of hers and Ray’s in New Hampshire. Donna is considering keeping a few in a tiny Ketel One bottle and stashing it somewhere in her house. There will be a private, informal, memorial toast to Ray alongside his favorite bar snacks at the Mariner Grille from 12:30-1pm on Tuesday, June 14th.