Sage-Allen escalator glance led to rising romance
Ron Catania went up the escalator following a person about to take something from a department store. When the incident passed, Ron went back down the escalator to check out someone else he observed — Donna Langevin. “I watched her from afar,” Ron says, but when “we both locked eyes, we just knew. … We looked at each other and fumbled with who would talk first,” Ron says.
Age 31, he worked in security at the former Sage-Allen store in Hartford that spring in 1977. Donna was the assistant buyer at age 24. “I had butterflies,” Donna says. She was very shy, but Ron started the conversation with chit-chat, he says.
Not too long after, they had their first date — lunch in the cafeteria surrounded by coworkers. “Nobody knew,” Ron says. They tried to keep their growing friendship secret, but a few months later when they were again in the cafeteria, Donna’s cobuyer insisted that Donna tell her the name of the guest she would be bringing to her wedding. Donna had evaded answering her several times, but Ron spoke up and said he would be the guest.
“You’re dating the Top Cop!” Donna’s co-worker said in shock.
It was a relief that people knew after trying to keep it secret. “She was the bee’s knees,” Ron explains. He enjoyed playing tennis, bicycling, going to the beach and exploring various restaurants with Donna. Another common denominator was they were both the second-oldest children in large families. Donna is from a family of seven girls; Ron has six brothers and one sister.
“I was a military brat. We lived all over,” Donna says. She attended high school in Massachusetts and came to Hartford first to go to an airline school and later joined a training program at Sage-Allen. “I worked my way up,” to buyer in a short time, she said.
Ron, from Rocky Hill, served in the Air Force and came back to use his G.I. benefits to go to school and become an assistant director of security at Sage-Allen when they first met. After a year of dating, “we would say each other’s words,” Ron says. They did not rush into marriage because each had been married once before at very young ages, but in the fall of 1978, they discussed the subject. They made “our life plan together,” and picked out rings.
On Aug. 10, 1979, they were married at St. James Church in Rocky Hill, but not before Ron’s plans for their honeymoon in St. Thomas had to be scrapped when Donna had no interest in traveling by boat and plane after her wedding.
“I’m not getting on a plane. I’m not getting on a boat. I was uprooted every two years,” Donna told Ron at the time, referring to moving around as a kid. Fortunately, Ron was able to get his surprise trip refunded, and they went to Cape Cod for a week.
They moved into the house Ron had grown up in and bought from his father, but they sold it and moved into an apartment so they could build their own home. Their first child, Tony, was born, and “I decided I wasn’t going back” to work, Donna says. She began providing day care for two other children as they built their new home in Rocky Hill. In 1983, their daughter Jennifer was born, and when she was 8 months old, Donna started a state-licensed day care program, Precious Kids, at home.
With a toddler and infant, Donna also ran the household when Ron went back to school in 1982 to earn an Executive MBA degree at the University of New Haven. For the next two years, he worked 7:30 a.m. to 6 p.m., attended class from 3-9 p.m. on Mondays, and studied nightly until midnight. “I don’t remember it being difficult at all,” Donna says.
“I think she was more at ease with the master’s program than I was,” Ron says. Over her 35 years of providing day care, “She never advertised one time.”
Donna took care of children before school, during the school day, after school and through the summer, without help. She also helped their son with special needs get on the bus for his program at the local school. “The days went by, that’s for sure. It’s a tough business to be in,” but, “the kids were all great.”
Ron coached their daughter’s baseball team, and she went on to become a soccer goalie and member of the basketball team at Rocky Hill High School.
During Ron’s 20 years with Sage-Allen, he rose to vice president of loss prevention. When the store closed, he was hired immediately during his interview for Bob’s Stores. As vice president of security, Ron was responsible for loss prevention at 34 Bob’s Stores and eventually 66 Eastern Mountain Sports stores and 50 Sports Chalet shops in California. “I was very proactive with training,” he said, during his 26 years with the company. But the “goose-bump experience” of his career was driving a truckload of clothing from Bob’s Stores to first responders immediately after the 9/11 disaster in Manhattan. Ron also was honored at Yankee Stadium as a disabled Vietnam veteran.
He retired in 2017 and worked with a company that put roofs on veterans’ homes. As he approaches age 74, Ron is working for the state helping veterans get jobs. With their son living in Glastonbury, Donna and Ron moved into a condominium last December and sold their house to their daughter and her husband, who have a 4-year-old daughter Catania.
Though Donna and Ron could not easily get away often when their children were young, they try to visit a favorite spot in Maine a few times a year.
The challenges they’ve faced “make you stronger. They don’t make you weaker,” Ron says.” Life doesn’t always deal you lemonade. Loved ones pass, and health deals a punch to the stomach. We actually find that we are closer … and understand that every day is another day to be together.”
Donna is “easygoing, not temperamental,” Ron says. And, “she’s got a bite to her. If she’s very adamant about something, she’ll stick to it,” including not flying since they met. “Maybe it was the sparkling eyes; maybe it was the smile; maybe it was the shyness,” but Ron says from the day he saw her, he knew she was special.
“He makes me a better person. … In my younger days, I was more into myself. … I’m not like that now. I’m more giving,” says Donna, who never imagined the path she’s lived. “I never saw myself with kids,” including having any of her own. She now sees her son’s challenges as a positive exposure for the children in her day care program. “Growing up with my son Anthony opened their eyes” and made them more sensitive to other children.
Throughout their marriage, Donna and Ron tried to schedule date nights, though they rarely were able to get out of the house together. They continue to honor that practice, either by going out for dinner or watching a movie and sharing a glass of wine at home. “I still have the same [wedding] band,” Ron says, and their pledge to each other endures: “I’ll love you forever and a day.”