PAWTUCKET, R.I. — One of Don Doucette’s best friends continuously ran through his backyard, all wet. Thirty years ago, to celebrate their friendship, they went on a two-day walk. Doucette and another good friend, Mark Benoit, did all the walking, and talking.

Afterward, Doucette, as he often would, wrote about the journey.

“The primary intent was adventure — to cross, as does water, all human imposed, social and physical bounds that tend to fragment the Ten Mile River Watershed. Envisioned was a more intimate encounter with the river. We were not disappointed.”

In 1995, Doucette and Benoit walked the entire length of the Ten Mile River. The Seekonk River tributary, however, is more than twice as long as its name implies. Its headwaters are at Savage Pond in Plainville, Mass., and from there, it flows south through North Attleborough, Attleboro, and Seekonk before entering Rhode Island and flowing through Pawtucket and East Providence, where it empties into the Seekonk River after passing through the Omega Pond Dam.

Donald Michel Doucette passed away peacefully May 9 at his Attleboro home. He was 81.

Doucette’s admiration for and love of the Ten Mile River and its watershed helped him build lasting friendships with many people. One of those relationships was forged with Ben Cote, who is nearly half Doucette’s age.

Cote initially met the man who would eventually become his mentor and one of his best friends during a meeting of the Ten Mile River Watershed Alliance in the early 2000s. He was just a kid, barely out of his teenage years.

“When I first met him, I could see Don’s passion for the river,” said Cote, 43, one of the pallbearers at his friend’s funeral. “He talked about the river like it was his best friend. I really got to know him, and what a great person he was.”

Their close friendship, however, didn’t start until 15 years after the final meeting of the Ten Mile River Watershed Alliance, in spring 2003.

“I kind of lost touch with him a little bit, and then some years later, I called him up, and I said, ‘Hey, I want to start the Watershed Alliance up. I know you’re probably out of it now. You’re enjoying your retirement. You might not want to be involved.’ I was wrong. He was very excited about starting the Watershed Alliance again.”

In 2018, the alliance was reborn, with a new name — Friends of the Ten Mile River Watershed — and a friendship blossomed.

“When we restarted, I would say that’s when our really close friendship started,” Cote said. “Like we were always friends, but after that point, Don and I, and Nancy and his family, we were very, very close and the friendship, of course, started around the river.”

On a rainy Thursday afternoon under a pavilion at Slater Park, Cote, four members of Doucette’s family — wife Nancy, son Donald, and sisters Dani Medeiros and Noela Pino — and friends Sam and Ron Normand spoke to ecoRI News about their friend, husband, father, and sibling.

Those gathered around the picnic table, referred to him as the “River Whisperer.”

“We had a wonderful time together,” his widow said.

Through the years, Doucette, to pay the bills, worked as a landscaper, at an ice cream shop, at a farm, delivered heating oil, drove a school bus, and worked at the Taunton Auto Auction. But he taught for free.

The Normands were introduced to Doucette in 2021 on a hike led by the Friends of the Ten Mile River Watershed.

“We’ve only known him for a few years — he was in a later part of his life and so he wasn’t out there hiking,” Sam said. “He would meet us at various points on every hike that we did, and he’d drive his car, and we’d stop for a break and he’d get out of the car with this great big hiking stick that he always had, and he’d lean against his car, and he’d give us some awesome historical oral history of the area. Always interesting.”

Her husband elaborated on Doucette’s impact on these hikes. It was significant.

“My wife thinks that I liked going on the hikes and all that stuff and picking up the garbage, which I don’t mind,” Ron said. “but I really used to wait for Don to give his synopsis of the area. You know, having grown up in this area and done a lot of the things that he talked about was just amazing. He just knew so much about the area’s environment and history.”

His sister, Noela Pino, recalled how her younger brother — the sixth of eight Doucette siblings — made outings more fun.

“Whatever the point of the trip was, there was always the side trips. And the side trips were always the best part,” she said. “You would always get a little lesson. I can remember him taking us to a place down in Orleans, Brewster [Cape Cod] and showing us wild cranberry bogs, where Native Americans used to pick the cranberries, and the plants were still there.”

Cote noted that when Doucette had “something important to say his finger would go up.” Cote and Doucette’s son Donald noted their friend and father had two sayings he often repeated: “What do you think we’re looking at here?” and “Put your thinking cap on.”

Outside of work, Doucette had many passions, and most of them involved the preservation and history of the area’s environment. He was a member of the Rehoboth Antiquarian Society, and he especially respected the way Indigenous people lived with the natural world.

“With all his volunteer work, I never knew how he had time for his job,” Cote said with a laugh.

Doucette and Nancy, married for 56 years, were original members of the Attleboro Land Trust.

To celebrate his memory, the land trust Doucette cared so much about noted on its website that his 2011 talk, titled “The Ten Mile River Watershed: A Walk Through Time,” was one of the land trust’s most memorable annual meetings. His presentation was “accompanied by a stunning slide show consisting mostly of postcards he had collected of scenes photographed up and down the Ten Mile during the early decades of the twentieth century.” It showed “Don’s authoritative grasp of his subject” through “painstaking research.”

Doucette also enjoyed lighthouses and was devoted to their preservation. He was a founder of the Friends of the Pomham Rocks Lighthouse in East Providence and served on the board of directors of the American Lighthouse Foundation.

While Doucette’s interests were vast and his community involvement wide-ranging, it was the preservation of the Ten Mile River where he made his greatest impact.

When he co-founded the Ten Mile River Watershed Alliance in 1990, the river he grew up exploring was far more polluted than it is today. Doucette organized cleanups that dragged tires, auto parts, and shopping carts, among much other debris, from the abused river.

Cote said Doucette protected the Massachusetts side of the Ten Mile River and his counterpart in Rhode Island, the late Paul Bettencourt who died in 2021, the Ocean State side. “I don’t even know if they ever met,” he said.

“As far as I’m concerned, he kind of started the whole movement,” Cote said. “It wasn’t just Don, there were others involved too, but he brought the knowledge. He had this great combination of protection and knowledge. He had the knowledge of the area, he knew the history, and he protected the river as though it was a family member or a friend.”