Former WNRI show host had ‘mission to uplift people’
City native Connie Lemonde died on March 29 at age 88
WOONSOCKET — She was a playwright, a poet, and a chronicler of ordinary city lives she found fascinating, but there was only one job that really mattered to Constance “Connie” Lemonde: lifting the spirits of others.
Now she’s gone. Known to many as the host of “Accentuate the Positive” on radio station WNRI, Lemonde passed away at The Friendly Home on March 29 after a sudden period of failing health. She was 88 years old.
“She was just a very talented woman whose only mission in life was to be kind to people and uplift them,” said radio personality Jeff Gamache of WNRI. “She didn’t care about politics or anything that distracted her in life. Her mission was just to uplift people.” Gamache met Lemonde in the mid-1990s, when she hired him to do some technical work and music for a play she had written. Later, she began writing a short spot for his show featuring a positive-minded “thought for the day.” That program later evolved into “Accentuate the Positive,” which she co-hosted with Roger Bouchard, general manager of WNRI.
Complaining of memory loss, she voluntarily stepped aside not long ago – a move
she found quite painful, Gamache said.
Lemonde was endlessly curious about people and expressed sincere interest in their experiences – traits that shine through in “That’s Life,” a book she wrote several years ago. The effort was a compilation of true stories of Greater Woonsocket residents who’d overcome adversity to find spiritual strength and inner peace.
As she explained in the liner notes, “Their struggle, pain, joy, grief, surprise, courage, spirituality, and humor are not confined to people in a small city in the USA. These things abide in our human condition, and could be experienced by anyone anywhere on Planet Earth.”
She had written about a dozen books in all, including works of fiction, and she was a skilled painter, displaying works of art in various locales about the city over the years – or just giving them away to friends.
To many, the waif-like woman with a pageboy haircut and a distinctively smoky voice did not seem to have many needs of her own.
“She never asked for much,” said Suzanne Poisson, a longtime friend of Lemonde’s from North Smithfield. “That was Connie. She never had any needs, to say. Anything was always okay with her.”
Poisson said Lemonde was living on her own at John F. Kennedy Manor until just a few weeks ago, and that her health began failing rather unexpectedly. Another friend of Lemonde’s – Ann Smith – called to tell her Lemonde was having trouble with an irregular heartbeat before she was taken to Landmark Medical Center, where she was a patient for about a week before being discharged to The Friendly Home.
Mayor Lisa Baldelli-Hunt called Lemonde’s passing “a true loss for the community.”
“It was always refreshing to see Connie – she was so positive,” the mayor said. “She brought positivity to the conversation. It’s so sad to see people like Connie passing.”
Not surprisingly, as a young woman Lemonde lived a religious life as a member of the Oblate Missionaries of Mary Immaculate, a group with roots in Canada, according to an obituary for her that appears on the website of the Menard-Lacouture Funeral Home on Carrington Avenue. From the mid-1950s to the early-1970s, the obituary says, she served in various places around the country to spread the mission’s word.
Born in Woonsocket, Lemonde was a graduate of the former St. Clare Girls High School and, according to the liner notes in one of her books, held a bachelor’s degree from Union Institute, an organization in Ohio that specializes in distance learning programs.
Her obituary says she had worked as an “employment interviewer” for the state for many years before retiring in 1994.
During the wave of immigration from Southeast Asia that followed the war in Vietnam, Lemonde was active in resettling Laotian refugees in the city. Lemonde sponsored many Laotian families as they charted a path toward citizenship and helped teach English to many of those she took under her wing.
Lemonde is survived by one brother, Normand G. Lemonde and his wife Jane in Wall, N.J., as well as several nephews and nieces, but it’s unclear if her obituary will be published in a newspaper at some point. Friends of Lemonde say her brother was recently discharged from the hospital after battling COVID-19 and may do so when he’s fully recovered.
Her obituary also pays tribute to Lemonde’s “adoptive family” of Mike and Yen Partridge.
In keeping with her wishes, Lemonde will be buried at St. Jean Baptiste Cemetery in Bellingham, with a private ceremony. Donations in her memory can be made to St. Jude Children’s Hospital in Memphis or the Woonsocket Cat Sanctuary on Mendon Road.
“Connie would want to be sure to say a great big “Thank you!” to all those who provided her with top-notch care in recent weeks while she spent her final days at The Friendly Home,” her obituary says. “Connie would say that it was more than coincidental, more likely providential, that she concluded her time on earth at a place called “The Friendly Home”…. That was Connie…all the way!”