By DONNA KENNY KIRWAN

PAWTUCKET -- For 23 years, Times readers laughed with him, sighed with him, reminisced with him and sometimes cried with him. George Bonin, the newspaper’s beloved contributing columnist, passed away on March 17 at the age of 92.

Bonin, who grew up in Central Falls and lived most of his adult life in Pawtucket, retired from filing his column on Feb. 25. In a letter published that day, he wrote that he had actually submitted his “swan song column” two years earlier, on his 90th birthday. However, he noted then that he had received multiple responses urging him to keep writing, so he did.
In pieces that were always welcomed by readers, he continued to shared his wit, wisdom, poetry and unique point of view on life in the Blackstone Valley and the world in general. Some columns were particularly poignant, such as one titled “Don’t Let Tobacco Kill You,” about an old friend who stubbornly refused to give up smoking, and “Rita, Why Did You Leave Me?” penned when his wife of 66 years passed away in 2002.
Richard Bonin, one of Bonin’s three sons, said George W. Bonin Sr.  was born in the Boston suburb of Jamaica Plain on January 3, 1916. His father, Ovila Bonin, was a vice president for Texas Oil Company. He died of pleurisy in 1925 at the age of 33.
Following her husband’s untimely death, Bonin’s mother, Flora, returned with her three children to Central Falls and settled near the Scott’s Pond area. George graduated from Central Falls High School during the Great Depression. According to Richard, he served with the Rhode Island National Guard, worked as a typist for the Central Falls Tax Department and was a foreman with the WPA.
In 1936, Bonin married Rita LeFebvre. The couple produced three sons, George, Richard and Paul. At the start of World War II, Bonin, who was exempt for military service, was working at Collyer Insulated Wire Company. Around 1945, the couple bought a house on Vale Street in Pawtucket, where they made a home.
Richard Bonin recalled that the family lived “pay day to pay day.” In an effort to become more financially secure, he said his father bought “the local corner grocery store.” His mother ran the store during the day and his father would work in the early evening hours when he returned from his day job.
However, the early 1950s proved to be disasterous for all the “mom and pop” stores that dotted the city’s landscape. Those stores could not compete with then-emerging grocery store chains; the Bonins were forced to declare bankruptcy, Richard Bonin said. They lost the store and their house and moved into a tenement on Main Street.
George Bonin remained at Collyer Insulated Wire, retiring in 1978 at the age of 62 after 38 years with the company. Richard Bonin said that around this time, his father, who always had “a gift for expressing his thoughts,” became a contributing columnist for The Times.
During the next 27 years, he produced some 1,800 columns. According to Richard, “My mom was his critic, and if she read an article that brought tears to her eyes, he knew he had a winner.”
Richard Bonin said his father’s long stint writing weekly columns gave him a new purpose after retirement. He also said that this work helped ease his father’s pain and loneliness when he lost his wife six years ago.
In a eulogy to his father, Richard Bonin wrote, “Whatever or wherever Heaven is, if there is a Heavenly publication then I can see my dad writing for all eternity. Imagine getting a story from Moses, Galileo, Abraham Lincoln or a young, brave soldier who lost his life in the Iraq War?”
According to the Bonin family, funeral arrangements have not been finalized. However, the family is requesting that any memorial donations made in George Bonin’s name be sent to The Times Merry Christmas Fund or The Times Summertime Fund, c/o The Times, 23 Exchange St., Pawtucket, RI 02860.