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06/16/2021 08:30 AMRyan Duques, a fourth-generation Madison resident, is a familiar face around town and at this newspaper—Ryan co-founded The Source 25 years ago with his friend James Warner, and Ryan says it was his idea to bring the Person of the Week feature to the Shore Publishing newspapers.
He says, “Newspapers are a love of mine, so at the time I was always looking back to see what the Shore Line Times was doing 50 and 75 years ago, and I found a series in the Shore Line Times called Personality of the Week back in the 1950s.”
He came across an edition in 1960 featuring his great-grandfather Augustin Duques, a clarinetist in the NBC Symphony Orchestra who owned a summer house in Madison. The photo with the article showed Augustin next to his grandson Alan, Ryan’s father, who was then 11 years old, and Ryan’s uncle Michel.
“It totally captivated me—it’s telling stories about people,” Ryan says. “I said, ‘We need to do this.’”
When the idea was presented at an editorial meeting, those in attendance balked, convinced they’d have a few names to kick off the initiative for the four papers they had at the time but would soon run out, Ryan recalls. The feature has since become a weekly staple of the now seven papers published by Shore Publishing.
He jokingly wonders if he should be worried now that he himself is being featured.
“This was 20 years ago now,” Ryan says, “and so I always assumed that someday I would get a call to be the Person of the Week and that would be the warning sign that they’re starting to run low.”
Lighting Up Madison
On the contrary, there’s good reason to feature Ryan in the very column he brought to The Source long ago. He is receiving the Madison Chamber of Commerce’s Member of the Year award on behalf of the town’s Economic Development Commission (EDC), of which he is chairman, for its efforts to “Light Up Madison” for the 2020 holiday season. The award will be presented Tuesday, June 22 at the Chamber’s annual dinner.
Last November, the EDC began a project to decorate almost 40 trees along Boston Post Road and Wall Street in downtown Madison with 25,000 lights by Thanksgiving. The EDC sought businesses, non-profits, and individuals to sponsor add-on displays.
The Madison Beach Hotel sponsored the lighting of the Scranton Library as an add-on to the project. The EDC used money from its tourism budget, which got a bit dusty from disuse during the pandemic, to fund the project. The Board of Selectmen also contributed money to finish the project.
“I was proud to help lead the EDC’s response to brighten the spirits of business owners, residents, and visitors to Madison during the COVID winter. The effort, which stemmed from an idea that John Mathers of the Madison Beach Hotel had, was orchestrated quickly by a working group that included EDC Vice-chair Lisa Miksis, John Mathers, David Anderson and Eileen Banisch,” Ryan explains. “Lisa and I then took the plan to the EDC, who quickly embraced it and issued an RFP (request for proposal).
“My personal goal for the project was to simply brighten the spirits of those who visit our town, especially after a tough year of closed businesses, canceled events, and social distancing,” Ryan says. “It was just really an example of the things that we all do as Madison residents that continue to make the town a really special place to live.”
A Lightbulb Goes Off
As the pandemic was unfolding, members of the EDC brainstormed regularly about ways to help support the business and commercial community. They surveyed business owners and shared the information with their partners at the State Department of Economic and Community Development as well as their regional partners.
“As we started to enter into the early fall,” Ryan says, “I think we collectively realized that we needed to start focusing on things that add a bit of vibrancy and add a bit of life to our community.”
John Mathers, general manager of Madison Beach Hotel, called Ryan and asked him to convene the EDC to discuss the idea of replicating the Nantucket Christmas Stroll.
“It’s a pretty special thing in Nantucket that puts a bunch of holiday cheer and decorations and events around the community, and it also helps to promote the island during a period of time where things are usually very quiet because their summer season is obviously their busy season,” Ryan explains. “What John was hoping that we would do is to replicate some of the aspects of that Nantucket stroll.”
Ryan was most pleased with the reaction from the public. While, in general, one need not look far to find negative comments on Facebook and elsewhere on the Internet, the response to the “Light Up Madison” initiative was overwhelmingly, if not completely, positive.
“People were like, ‘Oh my gosh, who did this? It’s beautiful, it makes me happy, it makes me smile’ and that was the exact intent,” Ryan says. “All we wanted to do was like, ‘You know what, this year sucked. What can we do to add just a glimmer of light, a glimmer of brightness and happiness?’ and we absolutely achieved that.”
He adds, “I’m so flattered and proud to receive the award and the recognition on behalf of the EDC, but it certainly wasn’t just me” behind the project. “There were so many people.”
The displays were supposed to be dismantled at the end of January, but Ryan and his group unanimously convinced the powers that be to let it remain up through February.
“I’m so proud of what was created. I loved it. It was spectacular. I mean, I would turn into town and every time, even though I’d seen it for months, I’d be like, ‘Oh my gosh, it’s beautiful,’” Ryan says.
Ryan can see and appreciate the big picture, where he fits into it, and how he helped form it.
“My whole being in that role, including my whole desire to create The Source and other community papers, was to create a sense of pride in the communities that we live in,” he says.
Helping to light up Madison during the darkest months of the year, bringing the Person of the Week feature to his own papers, and helping to inform the community about things that are happening in town are expressions of a goal he’s always had, Ryan says. “It’s the same thing with the EDC—it’s like, ‘How can we create vibrancy, how can we better enhance the community so that we’re even more proud of the places that we live in?’
“The response to Light Up Madison was overwhelmingly positive and there was a strong desire to continue the tradition,” he adds. “The EDC determined it was not the best group to facilitate a regular holiday light program and that our budget was not the best place for the initiative. Thus, the initiative was budgeted as a separate initiative for the 2021-’22 holiday and winter season and is expected to return—perhaps even brighter!”
Always an Entrepreneur
While Ryan has stepped back a bit from the entrepreneurial life he formerly led, he still has the same drive and ideas. He and Warner sold Shore Publishing to The Day in 2008 and he has since initiated numerous startups. Two years ago, he was hired as the head of growth offerings in the Innovation Division at Travelers in Hartford, helping other entrepreneurs start businesses.
“Basically, I get to play with startups all day, internal startups. Some of them are related to insurance. It’s like a kid in a candy shop. I literally get to experiment with startups all day long, but the fun part about it is, unlike it being your own company, I get to sleep at night because there’s a big company behind it,” he says. “I still have a sense of ownership because they’re my babies just like The Source was—and still is, to be honest—but there are other parents, too, parents with deep pockets.”
Ryan may sleep more these days, but his mind is a different story.
“My mind is always going, and I have a couple of entrepreneurial ideas brewing at any given moment, including a few right now,” he says. “I remain on the board of the Guilford Savings Bank, where I’m the chairman of the Technology Committee, so I stay close to everything that’s happening in our local business ecosystem and also get to participate in business decisions at the bank.”
A Long Legacy in Madison
The Duqueses are continuing their long legacy in Madison. Ryan and his wife, Erin, have two daughters, Analise, 13, and Alexandrine, 10, who go by Ana and Alex. The girls are the fifth generation of the family to live in town. Erin is an estate planning attorney and a member of the Madison Board of Selectmen. Ryan and Erin met at the end of college in 1998 after Ryan was already a newspaper publisher, a fact that blows his mind at age 45.
“The Source is 25 years old, which means I was 20 years old when we started the newspaper,” he says. “We had this huge launch party and [James and I] couldn’t buy the alcohol because we weren’t 21, so I think one of our parents or somebody actually had to order the champagne for the launch because we were too young. And so now, 25 years later, I’m 45, I’m not going to have that many iterations left to do different things.”
The passage of time, what he’s done with it and his hopes for what remains, is a topic he thinks about often.
“As I think back over the years, especially the last 25 years, there’s this sense of just wanting to create passion and pride for the community that we live in,” Ryan says. “One of the main reasons for starting the newspapers was to help amplify that pride through storytelling. Then, as my daughters arrived and are growing up, it’s that constant reminder that we live in such a special place that not only has geographical attributes that are beautiful and unique, but we also are surrounded by really amazing people.
“Take a moment and stop and get to know people. Ask questions and be positive and look at everything as an opportunity and as a chance to do something good and do something to be proud of,” he continues. “That’s what made me ultimately successful as a newspaper publisher. That has allowed me to have such a positive experience with the EDC, the continued desire to embrace and experience that.”
In a revelation that should surprise no one, Ryan has big plans for his future.
“I want to continue to explore the entrepreneurial passions that I have. I want to create more things. I want to cultivate passion and curiosity in my children, wherever they may lie. I definitely want to travel as much as possible and also just have an open mind, see where things take me, because I don’t want to have a prescribed road map at this stage in my life,” he says. “I want to be open minded to what the world has left to offer.”