“Cheerleader” is one way to describe Tom Celona. Celona has been in the forefront of so many causes, sits on so many boards and is such a champion for the state, that it is a wonder he has time to be a businessman.

Celona has promoted economic, community development and education for decades, whether it’s Kent Hospital, Junior Achievement, the Central Rhode Island Chamber of Commerce, the Warwick Rotary Club, Bryant University or the New England Institute of Technology. But, more than being a cheerleader, Celona leads. He has chaired the hospital board of trustees, the chamber board, Junior Achievement and served as president of the Rotary Club and that’s just a partial list.

Yet, with so much energy devoted to non-profit causes, Celona also built the Thrifty brand in Rhode Island. His various companies, between car rentals and sales, airport parking, airport valet parking, limo services and car and equipment leasing, employed more than 160 in 2004.

Since then, Celona sold many of his enterprises and this week he closed the last of the Thrifty vestiges, the car sales on Post Road. Officially, Celona says he’s retired (The sign announcing that went up in front of the Thrifty lot earlier this week).

Don’t believe it.

In an interview Tuesday, Celona talked excitedly about developments at the hospital, where he remains engaged as a board of trustees member. He was just as animated about what’s happening at Green Airport and what a longer runway and other improvements (approved last week by the Federal Aviation Administration) could mean for Warwick businesses and the state economy.

He sees the airport as crucial to the city and state’s economies. The benefits to Warwick come from jobs in hotels, restaurants and businesses linked in to the airport, and by the taxes those businesses generate.

Celona played a key role in rallying the rental car companies to support the Interlink and the connection between the terminal and a railroad station. Location of the car rental garage and offices make the Interlink viable as a customer facility, with charges paid for renting cars at the airport financing a major chunk of the $122 million project. Some day, people looking to catch trains to Boston and other cities, and coming from those places to Green, may pack the moving walkway. For now, it’s mostly people renting or returning rental cars.

Speaking of the state’s economy, Celona extolled what Keith Stokes is doing as the director of the Rhode Island Economic Development Corporation. Earlier Tuesday, Stokes addressed the Rhode Island Commodores, a group to promote Rhode Island Business. Former Governor Lincoln Almond appointed Celona to the group.

“It’s time to move on,” Celona says from behind his desk, with walls of awards, mementoes and pictures of golf courses and cars behind him. He said the opportunity to lease the property arose and he and his partner for about 25 years, Gary Taravella, decided to close the car sales business. In reality, it won’t be as simple as locking the door and handing over the keys.

Celona has always looked for new ways to do business in tough times and this recession is no exception. Realizing that credit is tight and that some people were living week to week and couldn’t afford monthly car payments, he set up a bi-weekly payment schedule. He needs to wind down those agreements before he’s totally out of the business.

Celona sees plenty of opportunity for those who are innovative “and are willing to work 80 hours a week.” Celona’s love affair with work and cars started in his father’s service station, at Mineral Spring and Douglas Avenues, at the age of 10. Gas sold for less than a quarter a gallon and Celona washed windshields. He still trades stories of those early days with his 103-year-old father, who started the station in 1924.

“Now you start a car up and you’ve used 25 cents of gas,” he says with a laugh. After graduating from LaSalle Academy, Celona went to Bryant University and earned a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration in 1969. He started off selling cars for someone else but the dealer sent him home after six weeks because he wore a sports jacket instead of the required suit, not because Celona was being stubborn but because he didn’t have a suit. Soon he learned of the relatively new Thrifty Car Rental franchise. He and his brother in-law, John Geraci, got the Rhode Island slot, the 21st Thrifty in the country. They started with 17 cars and grew to more than 1,000 cars at one point.

“A good golfer remembers the bad shots and a bad golfer remembers the good shots,” Celona says when asked about the highlights of his 42 years in car related businesses.

“There were the days of 21 percent interest rates. It was a killer. Two energy crises and then 9/11 and the business went to zero,” Celona said. The Blizzard of 1978 also hit hard. Not just the snow – then Governor J. Joseph Garrahy declared that people with rental cars didn’t have to pay for them. “After all, they couldn’t drive them anyway,” Celona said.

On the positive side, Celona recalls the help of the Small Business Administration, which allowed him to buy a Thrifty franchise for Boston. He later sold it, but Celona remains a vocal advocate of the SBA. In 2000, they named him their Rhode Island Small Business Person of the Year.

With so many contacts and connections, one would imagine Celona at least flirted with elective office.

“I did…for a second,” he said. “I’d rather work behind the scenes.” But Celona did run for “Mayor” of Warwick when he put his name up alongside that of former Warwick Boys and Girls Clubs executive director Flo St. Jean in a promotional “election campaign” to help non-profits.

Celona and his wife Kathleen have two grown daughters and divide their time between homes in North Kingstown and Florida.

Without the business, Celona expects to spend more of his winters in Florida. But he won’t be making a complete break from the Ocean State.

“My heart’s here,” he says.

And don’t be surprised to find him coming back to fight for what he believes in – Rhode Island and Rhode Islanders.