Letter: Don’t forget ‘Zip’ Raiola’s career in the theatre!

Posted 11/8/18

This is a brief addendum to Manny Correia’s very fine tribute to Dominic “Zip” Raiola, (“ In memory of the late ‘Zip’ Raiola ,” Oct. 25 Phoenix). I feel …

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Letter: Don’t forget ‘Zip’ Raiola’s career in the theatre!

Posted

This is a brief addendum to Manny Correia’s very fine tribute to Dominic “Zip” Raiola, (“In memory of the late ‘Zip’ Raiola,” Oct. 25 Phoenix). I feel the need to humbly add one more, perhaps best kept secret about the great Bristol basketball coach.

While many are familiar with his athletic successes, how many are aware of his involvement as a theater director?

In my ninth-grade year (1962) at the then-Guiteras Jr. High School, Zip gave incipient thespians a chance to “walk the theatrical boards” when he offered to serve as the teacher who would head up the production of “Cheaper by the Dozen,” a play based on the autobiography by Frank and Ernestine Gilbreth.

The play became my first introduction to theatre which eventually morphed into a career in educational theatre, community theatre, and semi-professional theatre.

To fill gaps in his own theatrical expertise, Zip had the good sense to enlist my Dad, Arthur H. Manchester, Jr, as well as his friend at the time, Jack Colt, actor and brother to Ethel Barrymore Colt, with whom my dad was studying acting. Zip’s role was pivotal in that he was the educator who coordinated the event and without whom the show would not have happened.

In subsequent years, when he and I met on the bike path near his home, we’d reminisce about a seminal event in my life for which Dominic “Zip” Riaola was responsible. Thank you, Zip, and God bless!

Jim Manchester

Bristol

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Jim McGaw

A lifelong Portsmouth resident, Jim graduated from Portsmouth High School in 1982 and earned a journalism degree from the University of Rhode Island in 1986. He's worked two different stints at East Bay Newspapers, for a total of 18 years with the company so far. When not running all over town bringing you the news from Portsmouth, Jim listens to lots and lots and lots of music, watches obscure silent films from the '20s and usually has three books going at once. He also loves to cook crazy New Orleans dishes for his wife of 25 years, Michelle, and their two sons, Jake and Max.