Love, Ron

October 1, 2025
• Needham remembers Ron Sockol, who passed away Aug. 25, as the man who made things happen.

Memorial Park faced a dilemma back in the 1980s: The old field house, home to equipment storage and meeting space, needed repairs. Though the town appropriated funding for the project, they realized they were $20,000 short.

Sitting at Town Meeting, Ron Sockol’s gears started to turn.

“I see him pull out his pad and his pencil,” his wife Lois recalled. “And I hear him say under his breath, ‘I can do that.’”

Inspired by a similar effort in 1921, when Memorial Park was leveled with the help of many Needham residents, Ron rallied more than 300 volunteers to raise the roof of the field house in October 1985. Despite heavy rains and labor-intensive work, Community Weekend, with Ron as its chair, was a success.

In a letter published in the Needham Times afterward, Ron called it “a community love story that had such a beautiful lasting ending.” “It is so easy for me to say, ‘I love you all,’” he wrote.

Ron Sockol, who passed away on Aug. 25, is remembered as a community organizer, sports coach, builder, creative, family man and more by those who knew him well. He was 95 years old.

Whether professional or personal, for family, friends or neighbors, Ron put others first, Lois said.

“He didn’t live his life with himself at the center,” Lois Sockol said. “He led his life and got his satisfaction, I think, out of considering the needs of others and answering those needs.”

In the 40 years Ron was in the contracting business, “he never built the same thing twice,” Lois said. His artistic leanings came in handy, as he could sketch out buildings and solve problems by putting them to paper. During Town Meeting, Ron would frequently draw to better visualize topics up for discussion.

He built the family’s homes, in Needham and on Cape Cod, and built and remodeled structures around town, including the old Needham Community Council building on Lincoln Street.

Jon Davis, who grew up down the street from the Sockols on Mackintosh Avenue, considered Ron a builder in two senses: the literal kind and the kind that brings the community together.

“When he had his mind set on something, it was just kind of get out of the way and let him go,” Davis said.

Davis later worked alongside Ron at the Needham Education Foundation. When asked for an interview, he replied: “Nobody who worked with Ron forgets him.”

For the NEF, Ron spearheaded a fundraising auction at the Needham Sheraton in the mid-1990s. Davis said Ron “must have called in a lot of favors,” because the NEF managed to obtain signed Hollywood screenplays and trips, with hundreds of people in attendance.

He leveraged his kindness and connections for the greater good, Davis said. “He kind of knew everybody,” he said.

Ron and Lois, married for 71 years, moved their four little boys from Newton to Needham in 1967. Ron immediately started coaching local sports teams, starting a two-decade stint with youth football. He also served as president of Needham’s Pop Warner Football. His coaching philosophy was more of a life philosophy: Winning isn’t the most important thing.

Tricia Sherman, vice president of Needham Junior Football and Cheer, said Ron taught players to be fair, kind and have fun. He taught them “to be good men,” she said.

“His team that he coached from their entry into football all the way through their graduation through high school football, all showed up to his funeral. Every single one of them was there. People flew in,” Sherman said. “I think that that right there says it all.”

His sports involvement and fatherhood collided in 1982, when he helped attract 15,000 fans to the centennial Needham-Wellesley Thanksgiving game in which his youngest son Jimmy played. Jimmy ran the ball 92 yards for a touchdown at Memorial Field, and Needham went on to win 36-14.

His sons kept him grounded, Lois said, and he felt compelled to give back for his life’s blessings.

Born in Newport, VT in 1930, Ron started his life in the midst of the Great Depression. His father passed away when he was 10 years old, and after graduating from Brookline High School, he attended Babson College. Right out of college, he was drafted into the Korean War, where he served as a medic with the U.S. Army.

Lois, whom he met when she was 17 years old, said his financially turbulent upbringing had no negative bearing on the man he would grow up to become.

“That can teach many lessons. It can teach you to be aggressive and accumulate and accumulate. What it seemed to teach him was to be grateful for everything good that comes in your life,” she said. “And he had a very strong sense of gratitude. He always had this sense of paying back. ‘I gotta pay back for my gifts.’”

Volunteering his time and talents became his way to pay it forward, and the Needham Rotary Club was one avenue through which he could do so. He was a member for more than 40 years.

“We do all kinds of good things, and Ron liked to do good things,” longtime Rotary Club member Ted Shaughnessy said. “It was a natural fit.”

After 9/11, Ron felt that call to action. Needham lost community members in the attacks, and in their memory, Ron organized a tree planting and ceremony with Rotary at Memorial Park.

“I would drive by there many times on Highland Ave., and I would see some of the family members there a month later, two months later, three months later, because that was like the place that they went to,” Shaughnessy said. “That was a fantastic project, and that was 100% Ron.”

A bench, dedicated to Ron back in June, now faces that memorial. Emblazoned on the plaque reads Ron’s motto: “We can do that!”

In his remarks at Ron’s funeral last month, Rabbi Todd Markley of Temple Beth Shalom said Needham always responded when Ron needed help because “he had always been there for them when they needed a helping hand.”

Forty years ago, after completing the Memorial Park field house, Ron considered the impact of that mindset.

“If the world could copy this, we wouldn’t have any problems,” he said at the time.