
Rhode Island
11/1/2026 | 4m 48sVideo has Closed Captions
Jack gives tours and delivers Meals on Wheels, both finding and providing inspiration.
Jack has been a native Rhode Islander all 82 years of his life. A retired teacher and principal, he volunteers for Meals on Wheels, gives tours with the Providence Preservation Society, and is an avid cyclist. Jack believes that the people you spend your life with have the greatest potential to inspire you. Filmed in 2014.
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States of America is presented by your local public television station.
Distributed nationally by American Public Television

Rhode Island
11/1/2026 | 4m 48sVideo has Closed Captions
Jack has been a native Rhode Islander all 82 years of his life. A retired teacher and principal, he volunteers for Meals on Wheels, gives tours with the Providence Preservation Society, and is an avid cyclist. Jack believes that the people you spend your life with have the greatest potential to inspire you. Filmed in 2014.
Problems playing video? | Closed Captioning Feedback
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Learn Moreabout PBS online sponsorship- I never anticipated living this long.
My mother died at 47, my father died at 61.
I was kinda surprised I hit 62, and then, here I still am.
(folky music) Rhode Island's kinda home to me, it's the only state I ever lived in with any longevity.
All the trips I've been on, always glad to get home.
If we meet someone from some other state, or another Rhode Islander somewhere, we don't know them, we have some friend in common.
We're only one degree away.
There's about a million people living in this state.
There's about a thousand square miles.
There's a way in Rhode Island, if you're gonna go more than ten miles away, that's like an over-nighter.
(laughs) I think it's a very attractive state, I like around here particularly.
I like the bays, the ocean.
There's a lot of woods out in the Western part of the state here.
You go about 35 miles, at least to exit seven, and you haven█t seen one building.
- (Kevin) Here y'go, uncle.
- Oh, thanks, kid.
Meals on Wheels, I started that when I retired.
It's going to a senior citizens center, and our job is to go down and get the meals, and go around to whoever's applied for it, and deliver the meals to them.
Kevin does the work, I get the c (laughs) - [Kevin] Yeah!
- My nephew, Kevin, was looking for things to do, and Kevin now is my runner, and I'm the chauffeur, so he goes in there and he delivers, and some of the people were incapacitated, I remember some people, they would lie in bed, every time I saw them.
They couldn't open their milk, we'd open the milk for them, turn on the television.
(grunts) (upbeat music) So I saw a blurb in the paper, they were looking for a tour guide for the Providence Preservation Society, and looking for things to do, I jumped and so for the following week, I video taped the tours as we went around Providence, and I became fascinated by it, I loved it.
I'm a geography nut, I gotta know where everything is, I wanna know about the place.
Here's the Nightingale House, I'll turn up here.
Edgar Allen Poe used to chase his girlfriend around in there in the recesses of the library.
I can't walk the tours anymore, once in a while I take people on a bus tour, riding tour, I've done that a lot.
I'm not so sure that I looked at it as far as giving back, I mean I get as much out of doing tours, and helping people that way, or delivering meals to them, as they ever get from me.
Keeps the mind going, I haven't got lost yet, and...I hope I haven't!
(laughs) I have stage 2 diabetes, and one of the... things they tell you to do is to exercise.
I always like to ride my bike.
People are extremely courteous to me.
You come to an intersection, even though I had the stop sign, and they don't, and they see you, they'll stop.
(peaceful music) Usually when I start off in the and I haven't said my prayers, I'll begin sayin' 'em then, and I wonder about God, life, I say a lot of prayers for my friends who have problems, difficulties like that.
You live in an area a long time, you get to know a lot of people.
I gotta say, it's the people who have affected me.
Those are the things that kinda inspire me.
(peaceful music)
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