A Wonderful Life in the Service of Others Meet Ron Rioux: Business, Church, and Community Leader by Gary Bouchard, photography by Jeff Dachowski

“DON’T THINK!” This was the command fastened to the machine in the Nashua shoe factory where Ron Rioux worked in the early 1960’s to pay for his college tuition. The warning was lost on this aspiring young student who planned to become a history teacher. With the steady rhythm of assembly line tedium, he dutifully inserted metal shanks into the bottoms of army boots as they filed past him. But Ron never stopped thinking.

Today as he approaches his retirement as the president of St. Mary’s Bank, Ron is still thinking. He thinks of his father, a laborer for Johns Mansville Manufacturing, who worked the three to eleven shift every day to provide for his seven children, and who never conceived of owning a home. Those work hours meant that Ron didn’t see much of his father, but he remembers his daily bicycle ride to the factory to bring his dad supper. Ron also thinks of his mother and the example she gave her children by volunteering her time and talents to the disabled, and her remarkable devotion to the Blessed Mother. Whatever the problem, she would tell her children, “I prayed for this to the Blessed Mother. It will be fine.”