CENTRAL FALLS, R.I. – To help celebrate its heritage, Navigant CU has agreed to help underwrite a new exhibit in 250 safe deposit boxes in the city’s Museum of Work and Culture, which will store family mementos that will help tell the history of this one-time mill town.
The $1 billion credit union was founded 92 years ago as La Credit Union de Notre Dame de Central Falls by mill workers pooling their wages and assets to make loans to each other.
The museum’s new "Treasury of Life" exhibit will celebrate the lives of the French-Canadian immigrants who worked the mills and started the credit union in 1915. The safe deposit boxes will be used to store baptismal certificates, military medals, food ration coupons and report cards that tell the stories of the local populace, which the owners may not want to give away.
Navigant, known until last year as Credit Union of Central Falls, has agreed to contribute $50,000 to the museum, half to fund some of the safe deposit boxes, and half to go to the museum’s endowment.
