On Thursday, March 27, Roseanne Camacho died unexpectedly. She was 80 years old.
…But you never would have known it. The rest of us on the PVD Eye, who were privileged to know her, never thought of her as 80. She was vigorous, down-to-earth, funny, intellectually curious, smart as a whip, and occasionally, feisty. She was easy to work with, calm, rational, trustworthy, and still funny. She was a very good editor and we owe her a huge debt of thanks for that, among other things. As a Board member she would often wait to add her opinion til near the end and then, she would usually either sum things up or gently remind us of a really important oversight we’d made.
Roseanne Camacho came to Providence in the late 60s for graduate school at Brown University. Apart from a decade, she lived in Elmwood, where she raised her daughter, Cara, and volunteered with Providence organizations from the early 70s on, most recently with Friends of Knight Memorial Library. She taught at the Gordon School for over a decade prior to returning to Brown for her Ph.D. in American Civilization. Most recently, as a retired educator, she edited the PVD Eye and supported its focus on Providence with enthusiasm, grace, generosity and great skill as both a writer and editor.
Roseanne and I became editorial buddies immediately when Deborah Schimberg, our publisher, asked us to work as the PVD Eye’s editors. As a NYC transplant and nondriver, I was grateful for the rides she offered to meetings and lunches and we would talk–often about her grandkids, Sydney and Owen, or mine and also about PVD history. She would fill me in on so much that I was unfamiliar with. Roseanne loved history and understood its implications for the future.
As a writer, many of her stories focused on history: the libraries (Knight Memorial, and The Community Libraries) and other aspects of Providence. She wrote because she cared: the comp plan, education and the arts, Black history and Indigenous history, statues and their people, Wanskuck and other PVD neighborhoods and more.
Please say her name and know that if the PVD Eye has informed you or given you insight and understanding about our city, then and now, it was probably Roseanne’s doing.
You will be missed so very much, Roseanne: by Debbie, Fraser, the Board, and all of us here at the PVD Eye.
Carole Saltz, editor and board member, 3/29/25
