Richard Alan Booth, 69, of Pawcatuck died Tuesday, October 26, 2021.
Rick, the son of the late Robert A. and Marie J.P. (Johnson) Booth, of Westerly. Graduating in 1975 from the University of Rhode Island, with a B.A. in Journalism. He was a member of Phi Kappa Psi fraternity.
For 13 years, Mr. Booth worked in every newsroom capacity at the old Westerly Sun on Main Street, painstakingly learning the now largely-lost craft of small market journalism. His career spanned the period from typewriters to the internet, from black-and-white to color, film to digital imagining, a fact of which he was particularly proud.
From The Sun Mr. Booth became editor of Offshore Magazine in Massachusetts, thence of First Word, working in the US Coast Guard district headquarters in Boston, where he won modest national recognition for his skills. He embedded with Coast Guard commands for deployment, including cutters Tamaroa, Eagle, and Seneca. He held several civilian Coast Guard awards, and was an honorary cutterman and honorary master chief, bestowed by the Coast Guard’s New England CPOA. He remained a lifelong advocate for the service including, with his wife, sponsorship of cadets at the Coast Guard Academy.
From Coast Guard, Mr. Booth earned a post baccalaureate teaching certificate from Framingham State College, teaching English at the Wolfeboro School in New Hampshire, Foxborough Regional Charter School and the former Pilgrim Treatment Center in Braintree, MA, and from 2011 at Al-Noor Academy in Mansfield, MA, retiring from full time work in 2017.
Mr. Booth was an avid amateur radio operator, with FCC call sign km1g. He was a proficient, proud user of International Morse Code.
He is survived by his wife wife of 43 years, Jeannie MacDonald Booth, two sons, Russell Alan Booth of Mansfield, MA and Randall Allison Booth of Pawcatuck, and three grandchildren. He also leaves a brother, Ronald A. Booth of Portsmouth, N.H.
His family will greet relatives and friends on Saturday, November 6 from 1 to 3:00pm at the Dinoto Funeral Home, 17 Pearl Street, Mystic. A remembrance service will immediately follow at 3:00 at the funeral home. Donations in Mr. Booth’s memory may be made to the American Radio Relay League in Newington, CT.