Guido Rugo

Guido Lawrence Rugo (1898–1984) was an American businessman from Boston who was president of a contracting company and a minority owner and vice president of the Boston Braves baseball team.

Early life Rugo was born in Padua and raised in Dorchester. He graduated from The English High School, where he was an All-scholastic quarterback for the city championship-winning football team as well as a member of the hockey team. At the start of World War I, Rugo joined the Naval Training Unit at Harvard University. The war ended before he went into active service.

Business career After graduating from high school in 1917, Rugo went into business with his father. In 1929 he began the Rugo Construction Co. with his brothers. The Rugos were involved in many projects in the Boston area, including the construction of schools for the City of Boston and the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Boston. During World War II, the company built the Letterkenny Ordnance Depot in Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, in a joint venture with the Perini Corporation. In 1950, Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court ordered Rugo to pay his brother $140,418 for his share in the fund. Boston City Auditor Charles J. Fox cleared Rugo of wrongdoing and ordered that the Boston School Committee pay Rugo the balance owed on the construction of a school.

Boston Braves In 1941, Rugo was a member of a syndicate led by Bob Quinn that purchased controlling interest in the Boston Braves (then known as the Bees) from Charles Adams. Rugo was a close friend of Quinn's son, John Quinn. In the fall of 1943, Rugo and two other minority partners, Louis Perini and C. Joseph Maney, issued an ultimatum to the other members of the syndicate - to buy out the trio's stock for what they paid for it or allow the three to purchase the other partners' stock for what they paid for it. The other stockholders elected to sell and on January 21, 1944, Perini, Maney, and Rugo purchased the club outright. The three businessmen, who were all contractors, were known as the "Three Little Steam Shovels".

Personal life A resident of Milton, Massachusetts, Rugo moved to Marblehead, Massachusetts, in 1949 after he purchased "Carcassonne", the home of Lydia Pinkham Gove (granddaughter of Lydia Pinkham), for $50,000.

Death Rugo died on November 18, 1984, at his home in West Roxbury. He was survived by his wife, Beatrice and four of his five sons.