Left to right: Michael Paine, Kyle Estrella, Melanie Aldrich and Shykeel “Shaq” Colon of Melanie Aldrich and Son Inc. pose at the job site for the Elmhurst Rehabilitation & Healthcare Center in Providence, Rhode Island.

Melanie Aldrich and Son Inc. recently worked on the Stadium Conservatory in Woonsocket, Rhode Island.

When Melanie Aldrich was a child and she told her dad that she wanted to be a carpenter just like him, he discouraged her and said it wasn’t a typical job for a woman. It soon became obvious that there was nothing typical about Melanie.

She never did pursue carpentry, but she found her true calling as a plumber, launching Melanie Aldrich and Son Inc. and becoming the first female plumbing inspector in Rhode Island and the first female President of the Rhode Island Plumbing and Mechanical Inspectors Association.

Last year, she added another “first” to her list as the first woman chosen to be on the state’s Board of Examiners of Plumbers.

“I’ve never wanted to be just a plumber,” Melanie says. “I always wanted to be a leader.” Today, at 51, she’s a bona fide trailblazer in her field. But the path getting there wasn’t always easy.

Raised in Brooklyn, New York, Melanie dropped out of high school, got married at 18 and moved to Pennsylvania, where her first husband found work as an electrician. When his employer needed a plumber, Melanie volunteered.

She quickly became a plumber’s apprentice and joined the union—much to the chagrin of her male co-workers.

“Some of the old-timers didn’t take me seriously and were terrible to me at first, saying ‘Oh…here’s the girl again,’ ” Melanie recalls. “But after they realized I was serious and that I wasn’t going to give up, they were wonderful to me.”

Juggling Wrenches and Babies

Motherhood didn’t get in her way, either. Before each of her five children was born, she continued to work until she was eight and a half or nine months pregnant. After the babies arrived, she did whatever it took to keep working.

“When my children were 2 or 3 months old and I was breastfeeding, there was nowhere to go, so I had to pump in the job Johnny. I remember thinking ‘This is so not worth it,’ ” she says with a laugh.

Still, she toughed it out and endured the occasional snubs and indignities that came with being a woman doing a traditionally male job. Whenever she fixed the plumbing at her grandma’s house, she had to work on the down-low.

“My grandmother would say ‘Shhh, don’t tell the neighbors,’ ” Melanie recalls. “She didn’t mean it in a bad way, but she was old-school.”

A ‘Plumbette’ Starts Her Own Company

Her mother, on the other hand, bragged about having a daughter who was a master “plumbette.” When Melanie launched Melanie Aldrich and Son Inc. in 1999, her mom secretly paid a painter to emblazon Melanie’s new work van with the phrase “I Repair What Your Husband ‘Fixed.’ ”

“My mom has always been so proud of me,” Melanie says. “From the time I was a kid, she always made me feel like there was nothing I couldn’t do.”

In 2003, Melanie moved from Pennsylvania to Rhode Island with her second husband.

Now based in East Providence, Aldrich and Son performs a mix of residential and commercial projects around the state. Notable recent projects include helping to restore a pair of 1920s theaters—the Greenwich Odeum in East Greenwich and the Stadium Theatre in Woonsocket—and doing work on the West End Community Center in Providence.

Part Boss, Part Second Mom

Since last year, Melanie’s full-time, right-hand man has been Shykeel Colon, a 23-year-old apprentice.

“When I first started working for her, it was like, ‘Should I help her lift that box?’ but I quickly found out she mostly does everything on her own,” Shykeel says.

“She’s a great boss who knows how to solve every problem, but at the same time, she’s also like a second mom,” he continues. “She’s reasonable and caring. She knows when I’m not having a good day, and she’ll ask me to talk about it. She’s pretty cool.”

In addition to teaching Shykeel, Melanie teaches apprentice classes at the Rhode Island Master Plumbers Association, all the while continuing to juggle work and motherhood. Melanie’s adult children have long since flown the coop, but she and her second husband are busy raising two young daughters, Ella, 5, and Sophia, 3.

Whether or not her girls grow up to be plumbers, Melanie says she’ll keep telling anyone who’ll listen that plumbing is a respectable, well-paying vocation that more people should pursue, regardless of their gender. But she admits that she might preach that message a little louder to girls.

“Hopefully, girls see me and say, ‘Wow, she’s a mom, she’s a wife, she has her nails done, she has makeup on…you can be a lady plumber and have it all!’ ” Melanie says.

She uses the phrase “lady plumber” half-jokingly, partly to shield her annoyance at the fact that new customers still often ask her, “Are you the owner’s wife?” to which she replies with a loud laugh, “Nooooo…I am the owner!”

Thirty-four years after she started, Melanie is a plumber who just happens to be a lady—not the other way around.

“I’m proud of who I’ve become,” she says, her voice growing emotional. “I hope when my grandchildren are older they’re proud to say, ‘My grandma was a plumber.’ That’s my legacy. I didn’t cure cancer, but I did something I loved, and I did it wholeheartedly.”