Americo A. Ottaviano

Americo A. Ottaviano, 97, of Johnston, died suddenly at home Friday, June 24, 2022. He was a steadfast patriarch, remarkable in strength of spirit, proud in his love of family, home, and life. He impressed those who knew him best as a polymath, creative yet logical, artistic and pragmatic.

He was also known as Rico or Rick or Mr. O.

Rico was the widower of Margaret M. Ottaviano, his wife of 67 years, who died in 2019. Wife and husband passed in their marriage bed, in the same home they made together starting in the summer of 1952.

Rico was a Navy World War II veteran, serving his country in duty where skill and chance kept him safe. He approached service as he did all else: do your best, learn all you can. He became a first-rate swimmer and excelled on an aptitude test for electrical engineering. After specialized training, he installed and maintained some of the first radar systems that ever went into military planes. He was of the right height and build to crawl into their tails.

His job diverted him from assignment on the USS Franklin, which sank in the Pacific.

Chance also put him in his life’s work. He was a career educator on an upward trajectory for almost a half-century, starting with a want ad he answered while looking for a part-time job for his wife. He thought work might help distract her from grief over the loss of their first child.

He answered the ad and was hired as an electronics teacher at Rhode Island Trade School, now known as New England Technical School. “Mr. O” went on to teach electronics at the Vocational Technical School of Rhode Island. He loved the classroom and the young men he taught. Some of his students kept in touch with him to the end of his life.

Limited by lack of a post-secondary degree, he went to college for the first time in his late 30s. With a young family of five, teaching full time, he earned his bachelor’s degree summa cum laude in liberal arts from Rhode Island College. He then completed his master’s degree in education at URI.

Rick became an instructor of instrumentation at Rhode Island Junior College in 1966, two years after the school opened. His fifth and last child was three years old.

He rose through the ranks of what became the Community College of Rhode Island, gaining the respect of students, fellow faculty and administration. He gravitated naturally to a mission: make CCRI welcoming to people of all backgrounds and paths. In 1982 CCRI’s president selected him as the college’s first Dean of Community Services.

The job defined his career.

In the 1980s and ’90s, his duties expanded daily. Rick initiated a range of courses and programs that brought thousands of locals onto a college campus for what may have been their first exposure. He established and ran the nation’s first motorcycle licensing program with a classroom component.

He oversaw a satellite service that was issuing more GEDs than any facility in the state. As dean, Rick created and ran a program that trained hundreds of certified nursing assistants. He administered programs for commercial driver’s licenses, court-ordered DUI instruction and real estate licensing. He was instrumental in housing the state’s municipal Police Academy at CCRI in Lincoln.

Remembering when he brought CDL licensing to the college, he told a reporter, “Basically, they didn’t tell me I couldn’t do it. So I did it.”

At the same time, his department published semester grab-bag catalogs of night courses, offering non-credit one-offs teaching stand-up comedy or self-esteem, beadwork or bread-baking. In opening the school doors to so many, for so many different things, he had a hand in building CCRI into the largest community college in New England.

Rick hired Richard Tessier as a grant writer in 1986. “He really believed in the mission of the college,” Tessier said. “He made it easy for the community to come in and reach out to us, and he never said no.”

Americo Ottaviano was born on Jan. 5, 1925. He was raised on Federal Hill in Providence, the fourth of five children of immigrant parents, Luigi and Giuseppina (Terino) Ottaviano. Rico was valedictorian of his junior high school graduating class and salutatorian of the Central High School Class of 1943. Months later he began wartime service.

He was discharged from the Navy in 1945. Rico was later a beer coil cleaner, a TV antenna installer and a TV repairman before becoming an educator.

He met his bride on a blind date in 1949. They married in February 1952. That summer, they moved into the home he had built, where they raised five children and lived the rest of their lives.

Throughout, he demonstrated a range of artistic and artisanal gifts in spare time that was almost never idle. He had been principal illustrator of his high school yearbook. He painted, sketched and etched, favoring nature scenes. He was a woodcarver with a flair for landscape design. He built bluestone walls that have stood for decades; laid brick patios; took on basic carpentry and electrical work; and was a scratch cook who prepared elaborate seafood feasts for extended family on Christmas Eve, well into his eighties.

Rico was always restless, moving toward the next order of business until the day he died. And he was above all loyal to his loved ones. On his last day, he spent the evening happily moving his chair across the front yard to catch the last of the sun on his face.

He left five children: Catherine Mondillo of Newport (Ronald), Richard of Los Angeles (Valerie), Robert of Coventry (Lori), Ronald of New York City (Lise) and Russell Ottaviano of Fairfax, Va (Laura).; 10 grandchildren: Lia, Christopher, Andrew, Elena, Nicholas, Stephen, Amy and Luca Ottaviano; Aria Mondillo-Goldstein and Allegra Mondillo; and one great-grandchild, Miles Ottaviano.

Burial will be private. A celebration of Americo’s life will be held on Tuesday, July 12, 2022, at 7 p.m. at the First Unitarian Church of Providence, 1 Benevolent St., Providence. Donations in his memory can be made to Meeting Street School. For online expressions of sympathy and more information, please visit www.nardolillofh.com.