Description
- Abstract:
- Oral history interview with Rosalind "Roz" Rustigian about life in the Fox Point neighborhood of Providence, RI and running a family business in the same neighborhood.
- Notes:
- Rosalind Roz Rustigian was born in Providence on September 27, 1951. She grew up in a brick house on Benefit Street, which she now owns and still resides in today. Her father, George Rustigian, a Brown graduate, started his own business, Rustigian Rugs, in the basement of the family home in the 1930s. Roz was educated outside of Fox Point at the Gordon School, and then the Lincoln School for girls. She also attended Connecticut College and the Cornell School of Hotel Administration. She took over the family business in 1980 and moved it to its current location on Governor Street in 1981. Although Rustigian often viewed herself as more in the neighborhood, than of it while growing up, she has formed a strong, lasting bonds with many of the people she has encountered as a local business owner. One of her current employees has worked for Rustigian Rugs since 1944, where he started out as a teenager digging out the basement of the family home to create George Rustigian's office. Over the years, she has employed many Fox Point residents, and, like her father, acted as a mentor for many local young men who came through her doors. She maintains close relationships with many of these men today. I'm difficult she says of her personality as an employer but I guess they like me. She says that her father was also tough, but he would never leave anybody that was in a bind. Neither will I. She is also an activist and very much involved in social justice concerns, neighborhood planning and politics. She has been active in the past with the Fox Point Neighborhood Association, the East Side Monthly Think Tank, and the Boys and Girls Club along with many other local organizations.
Citation
"Interview with Rosalind 'Roz' Rustigian"
(2010).
Fox Point Project.
Brown Digital Repository. Brown University Library.
https://repository.library.brown.edu/studio/item/bdr:1149983/
Relations
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Biography of Rosalind "Roz" Rustigian
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Transcript of interview with Rosalind "Roz" Rustigian
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Interview with Rosalind "Roz" Rustigian
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Collection:
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Fox Point Project
Since 2008, students from the Brown Center for Public Humanities have worked with Professor Anne Valk on collaborative projects to preserve and present the cultural heritage and social history of the Fox Point neighborhood. An archival collection of oral history …...