For the longest time, the second thing that came to mind upon hearing mention of Gate City Fence Co. was the little, cement-floored hall they used to rent out to anyone who had 50 bucks and agreed to not to do anything outrageously illegal.

My first thought, of course, is always the Nashua born-and-bred family business and how its inimitable founders, Charlie and Rita Forrence, nurtured a shaky startup with a few shovels and a beat-up truck into the thriving enterprise that Gate City Fence is today.

Still, even with so much Nashua and Forrence family history at the corner of Pine and Ledge streets, it’s Rita’s face that seems to pop up first when Gate City Fence is the topic.

And I know why, too: Back in the day, Rita was in charge of rental arrangements for that little hall at the same time a bunch of us 20-something guys got up the 50 bucks to party away the Super Bowl “in style,” meaning “free from the silly behavioral
boundaries normal-thinking wives or significant others might impose just to spare the family from embarrassment and the house from structural damage.”

For some reason, I was the guy to make the rental arrangements, which meant passing muster with Rita.

“OK, you can have it all day, but not too late,” she said. “Here’s the key. Make sure I get it back Monday.

“And for goodness’ sake, don’t break anything. Last group I had in here smashed the darn toilet. Imagine that? The toilet?”

Sufficiently admonished and then some, I gave my word, knowing right then I’d be passing that warning along the moment we all walked through the door on game day.

Rita Boucher Forrence’s death this week at a well-earned 95 years left Nashua one gem lighter. But it also inspired a plethora of warm, and often humorous, memories of a Greatest Generation poster child who, in concert with the shoe shop co-worker she fell in love with and married more than 71 years ago, created a familial, business and civic legacy that will endure indefinitely.

“For all that she did, there was nothing more important to my mother than family,” daughter Dru Peters said.

“She leaves a real legacy,” son Ken Forrence added.

The siblings laugh at their mom’s approach when customers came into the fence company.

“The first thing out of her mouth was, ‘Have you seen my grandchildren and great-grandchilden?’?” Peters said, describing how her mom gestured toward the walls covered in photos of her abundant brood.

“And she knew every name without hesitating,” Peters added, which might not seem all that remarkable until you see the numbers: 10 grandchildren, 22 great-grandchildren and four great-great-grandchildren.

“Yep, talking about fence prices could wait,” Ken Forrence added with a laugh.

If you’re one of the minority of Nashuans who never stepped foot in Gate City Fence, then you surely knew Rita from the old Modern Restaurant, where for 33 years she waited tables, cracked jokes and answered to “Three, please,” when an order was ready.

“They retired her number to the ‘Modern Hall of Fame’ when she retired,” Peters said.

For the uninitiated, Modern waitresses were assigned numbers that the chefs called when their respective orders were ready. If they forgot, they used a first name; likewise, if the daily special ran out, it would also come in the form of a general announcement.

Many a customer still laughs over the memory of the night the fried chicken special ran out. The announcement – “Attention, ladies … no breasts” – ignited robust laughter throughout the building.

Peters, in a eulogy that family members read at Friday’s funeral Mass, traced her mom’s humble roots growing up one of 10 children who had to leave school at age 16 for factory work to help support the family.

Each payday, Peters wrote, young Rita Boucher would drop her pay envelope out the window to her little brother waiting below.

“That money all went to food for the family,” she wrote.

Rita Boucher and Charlie Forrence worked on different floors at the shoe factory, “But she was a real beauty and caught his eye,” Peters wrote.

The Forrences married on June 14, 1941, in the same church where Rita’s life was celebrated Friday. They founded Gate City in 1947, running it out of their Walnut Street home until urban renewal flattened the entire neighborhood in the 1960s.

They reopened at today’s site, albeit in tinier quarters. Rita answered the phone, wrote up estimates and cooked, Peters said, right there in the office.

“She cooked meals for the men who worked for my dad,” Peters wrote in the eulogy. The entrees included hamburgers and “fried umbrellas,” what kids called fried bologna back then.

“When she started work at the Modern, that job fell to me,” Peters said, adding that the little hotplates “got a real workout.”

Rita Forrence’s no-nonsense ways – she was known to pound on tenants’ doors demanding late rent – coexisted quite nicely with the kind, generous and benevolent lady everyone loved.

“Hey, I got a lot of money out of those deadbeats, you know,” she told me in classic Rita parlance when I visited her and Charlie’s Windham home in June 2011.

It was their 70th anniversary, a celebration rife with fond and funny memories, such as the time she rebuffed Charlie’s offer for a boat ride at the shoe company outing around the time they met.

“She said no, she didn’t want to,” Charlie recalled. But his persuasive powers eventually won out; the boat ride became the young couple’s first date.

Rita Forrence was a whiz at whist, a love she channeled into remarkably successful fundraisers for her beloved St. Louis de Gonzague Church.

For her grand finale whist party – five years ago, when she was 90 – Forrence set a goal of $80,000.

“She made it,” Peters said. That party “actually earned $80,215 for the church she loved.”

Dean Shalhoup’s column appears Saturdays in The Telegraph. He can be reached at 594-6443 or dshalhoup@nashuatelegraph.com. Also, follow Shalhoup on Twitter (@Telegraph_DeanS).