April 25, 2025
Part and Parcel
Steve Richards ’89SCE, ’99G spends his retirement on campus
By Vicki-Ann Downing ’21G
The mailroom on the lower level of Raymond Hall is bustling at lunch time. Students remove packages from lockers as fast as employees can scan and fill them. Working efficiently amid the chaos is Steven Richards ’89SCE, ’99G. He is a Friar, too.
Richards has two degrees from PC — a bachelor’s degree that he began in 1974 and completed in 1989 through the School of Continuing Education, and a master’s degree in business administration awarded in 1999. His father, Raymond L. Richards ’52, was a Friar, as is his daughter, Cory Richards Iavarone ’09, ’15G. For more than 10 years, Richards managed the cafeteria in Alumni Hall, then put his MBA to work at Fidelity Investments. When he retired after 22 years, he decided to take a job in the mail room.
“You come someplace, and you just feel at home,” Richards said. “I believe a lot of it has to do with my father. There were two things you always heard about him growing up — he was a Marine in World War II, and he was a Friar.”
Richards’ father was encouraged to attend PC by a cousin who was the college chaplain, Rev. Charles H. McKenna, O.P. ’26, ’55Hon. After graduation, he worked as a time study engineer at Carol Cable in Warren. During Friar basketball games, he sat at his kitchen table in Pawtucket listening to broadcaster Chris Clark on a transistor radio, and “depending on whether they were winning or not, you could enter the room.”
Steve was the only one of his eight siblings to attend PC. He commuted with friends. A scholarship and full time work covered tuition.
“This was a hard grind. It was intense,” Richards said. “But it was a badge of honor. I did Civ when it was tough. I had Richard Grace and Rodney Delasanta.”
After two years, Richards, funds depleted, left college to manage a restaurant in Warwick. In 1985, when he was married with a child on the way and working six days a week, he decided it would be beneficial to finish his degree. PC welcomed him back, accepting all 56 of his credits, and he began part-time evening courses.
“I got three classes in, and my wife went into labor early and I was visiting the intensive care unit every night,” Richards said. “But I stayed in school.”
In 1987, a chance meeting with Rev. Edward R. Daley, O.P. ’46, ’81Hon., prior provincial of the Province of St. Joseph, led to the offer of a job in Food Service at PC. At the time, food service workers were college employees. Richards was placed in charge of the Alumni Hall cafeteria, which fed commuters and resident students, coaches and sports teams. The employee tuition benefit paid for his final four
undergraduate courses and, later, his MBA.
His daughters, Cady and Cory, remember accompanying him to work during school vacations. They wore chef’s hats and aprons. They learned to swim in the college pool during summer camps. In Slavin Center, adjacent to Alumni Hall, they played in the game room and mail room and under the concrete stairs.
“Cory was 5 or 6 years old when she came to me and said, ‘Dad, I’m going to school here,’” Richards said. “She only applied to PC.”
Cory received bachelor’s and master’s degrees in mathematics, was a member of Pep Band, and now teaches at Davies Career and Technical High School in Lincoln.
“My dad got me a job at the bookstore when I was an undergrad as a result of the relationships he built,” Cory said. “He instilled a love for PC in me at a young age. I would love to see my own kids attend PC one day.”
Marketing professor John Shaw encouraged Richards to take the GMAT and join the MBA program.
“I had two little kids and they were offering me this free opportunity,” Richards said. “I couldn’t pass it up.”
Richards left PC in 1999 after completing the MBA and after the college outsourced its food service to Sodexo. Fidelity Investments was hiring in advance of Y2K, a potential computer bug anticipated when digital calendars changed to “00” on January 1, 2000. He began on New Year’s Eve in 1999 and for 22 years handled customer problems ranging from misspelled names on accounts to issues with million-dollar transactions. In 2021, following the pandemic, he retired. But he was restless at home.
“I was looking around for something small, no pressure, and part-time,” Richards said. “On the PC website, I saw the mailroom job advertised. I thought, ‘I’m a PC guy. I’ve got to go back to PC.’”
He works 8 a.m. to 1 p.m. weekdays with July and August off.
“I like being on campus,” Richards said. “It looks a lot different, but there’s still community here.”
