
If you read the Sports section of West Bay newspapers, you most likely saw Pete Fontaine’s byline. Pete was synonymous with sports. Honored by his peers on numerous occasions, including the 6th State Group of Writing Excellence and Words Unlimited, (an organization for sports writers and announcers), Pete also had his own local radio program featuring his sport commentary. Peter C. Fontaine was born on July 26, 1946, the son of the late Alphonse and Anna (Raitano) Fontaine. He graduated from North Kingstown High School, where all things sports flowed through his veins, earning All-League honors in football and basketball.
In the early 1970s, he not only covered sports, he rushed head-on into all aspects of the sports world as a participant. Pete directed New England Babe Ruth tournaments, founded the South County Junior Football Club, coached his former North Kingstown basketball team to three state and divisional championships, and was “Coach of the Year” in DeMolay basketball and fast pitch softball.
During our nation’s bicentennial in 1976, the RI76 Commission (chaired by Rhode Island Historian Laureate and RI Heritage Hall of Fame President Emeritus Dr. Patrick Conley) tapped Pete to be the RI76 Sports Information Director for the Commission’s broad sports program. During that period Pete also organized and coached the highly successful first statewide senior slow pitch softball tournament won by his RI76 Seniors.
Pete Fontaine believed in sports and its positive effects on boys and girls of all ages. When teams needed a little promotion for a fundraising car wash or to pay for a bus to get to an out-of-state tournament, Pete was not only there with his ever-present pad and pen, but he would also “work the phones” to raise money to make sure that the effort was successful
His love of sports writing was legendary. In his later years he not only covered sports, but also community events in the West Bay, particularly working for the Kent County Daily Times, the Narragansett Times, the Warwick Beacon and the Johnston Sunrise.
When you saw Pete walking in the door, you knew it would be followed by some colorful prose in Pete’s unique writing style, a style that was continually cited for excellence by the New England Press Association. Pete was an award-winning sportswriter; but he was much more! He was a person that relished writing about that 10-year-old’s first home run, or about a local fish fry at the Elks Club to raise money for hurricane victims. Pete, in simple terms, was a champion to the communities he wrote about and to the individuals he so greatly affected in such a positive way. He died on March 27, 2024, at the age of seventy-seven.
Dr. Conley’s touching memorial published in the newspapers that Pete wrote for summed it up beautifully: Conley correctly observed that “Pete was truly one of a kind. In the past half-century, no sportswriter did more to publicize the local sports scene than Pete, but he not only wrote about it, but he also lived and loved it. The void his passing leaves cannot be filled. As president-emeritus of the Rhode Island Heritage Hall of Fame I will recommend him for posthumous induction. May he rest in peace.”
Peter Fontaine was inducted into The Rhode Island Heritage Hall of Fame in 2024.