Richard W. DeChamplain was born January 12, 1934, to William and Iphigenie DeChamplain, two saints of the highest order, in New Hampshire’s thriving paper mill town, Berlin. The day was frigid, so perhaps in response, Richard spent the rest of his 88 years setting the world on fire.
Growing up Richard enjoyed small jobs delivering his grandmother’s dairy products by wagon, playing swashbuckler with his cousins, playing hockey (of course!), and jumping off the ski jump built by the Nansen Ski Club, oldest such club in the nation. He was mostly a dutiful altar boy at St. Joseph’s Catholic Church, but always a mischievous student. He was known to be caught sneaking cigarettes in the boys’ room, mistaking it as outside the nuns’ purview.
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