New London — Manny Rivera was marooned on a sailboat with four retired high school principals when he made the decision to go after the job of superintendent of New London schools.

It was a sunny summer day one year ago, when Rivera joined Richard Foye, Tom Amanti, Don Macrino and Lou Allen Jr. on board the Hibernia, Foye's 22½-foot Ensign, for a sail on the Thames River.

Rivera, superintendent of Norwalk Public Schools at the time, was back in his hometown visiting old friends. Foye, Amanti and Rivera all graduated from New London High with the Class of 1970. Macrino graduated a year earlier. And Allen, although not a native New Londoner, was a longtime city educator and former high school principal who recently retired as director of the Science and Technology Magnet High School of Southeastern Connecticut at New London High. 

The men had convened in the past for their annual "administrator's cruise," where they typically talk about their high school days and other news in the city, but on this day, as Foye navigated the Hibernia, he began selling Rivera on the New London job opening.

A retired principal and superintendent, Foye had just been named for his second stint as the city's interim superintendent, and he believed Rivera was the best person for the job.

"Rarely in life do things line up with the perfect person at the perfect place at the perfect time who can do some real good," said Foye, recalling his passion to convince Rivera to come home and oversee city schools.

"It was just an extraordinary confluence, that everything was lining up," he said, of the open position and the city's transition to an all-magnet school district, and the possibility that Rivera, 63, with impressive local, state and private-sector credentials, might be able to lead the way.

"It was a hard-sell on the Hibernia that day," recalled Foye. "And we spent some time convincing him. But destiny doesn't line things up all the time."

Rivera was named New London superintendent effective Feb. 1 last year, and this week will begin his first full academic year at the helm of city schools.

"I think (Manny as superintendent) is the best thing that has happened to New London in many, many years," said Macrino, a former city councilor, retired Waterford High School principal, and current headmaster at Saint Bernard School in Uncasville.  

"There is a brief window of opportunity to get schools in New London back on track, and (Manny) is the silver bullet to get our schools back," Macrino continued. "He is a smart guy, and he knows what it takes to improve literacy in an inner city district. He knows how to do that. He knows how to manage it all, and I think he knows how to get rid of the roadblocks that have held us back. ...It's not an easy task. But he's the person to get it done. And for once, the stars have lined up and been good to New London."

'My life was full'

The reality of just how poor the Rivera family was crystalized for Manuel J. Rivera 45 years ago when he filled out financial aid forms for college.

His father, Jose Manuel Rivera, had left the family about the time that Manny was born, and his mother, Iris Otelia Brossa Rivera, worked long hours as a nurse's aide at Lawrence + Memorial Hospital to support Manny and his three older sisters.

Completing the forms, Rivera learned that his mother made about $4,700 annually.

"I always knew we had no money," he said.

Rivera's mother had come to the country from Puerto Rico in 1945, following his father, who had been recruited two years earlier to work as a welder at Electric Boat. The family was among the first Puerto Rican residents of the city, and settled in an apartment in a mostly commercial area on Douglass Street, not far from where the downtown Holiday Inn is today.

"It was a big building and we literally lived on the first floor. There was one bedroom, a kitchen and a living room, and there was no heat, literally, no heat in the house," Rivera said. "There was a blower on the side of the stove, and on a freezing morning, you would get in your blankets and get in front of that blower before school."

Rivera, who would attend Brandeis University on a full scholarship and earn his master's and doctorate from Harvard University, got his early education at the Jennings School, the former Bulkeley Junior, and New London High.

Growing up, he spent considerable time at the YMCA (now the location of the Interdistrict School for Arts and Communication). He recalled it as a formative time, as he made friends, perfected his pool and ping-pong skills, spent time in the gym, learned to swim, worked on homework, and competed in Biddy Basketball.

"The YMCA was my savior as a youth. It was where I had an opportunity to connect with friends, and it was a safe haven, where from the time I was in third, fourth grade, I would stop on my way home from school every day," he said.

When Rivera was 11, he got hit by a car and was seriously injured. He was in the hospital for a couple of weeks and, eventually, the family received a small settlement for his injuries. That was about the same time that Douglass Street was being razed as part of the city's redevelopment project, and Iris Rivera was given $750 from the Redevelopment Agency to find a new apartment.

With the accident settlement and the redevelopment money, the family moved to the third floor of a multi-family home at 96 Ocean Ave., just as Manny started high school and discovered his talent for running.

"Manny was a great track star, and one of my most vivid memories of him from my high school days is Manny running in all kinds of weather all over town, and he was as thin as a rail and as fast as lightning," Macrino said. 

In 1970, Rivera was state champion in the 880 and still holds the high school record with a time of 1:55.4. By his sophomore and junior years, he was traveling around the region and the country to track meets, and in his senior year he won the National Junior Olympics in the half-mile in Knoxville, Tenn.

Norm Higgins, a longtime running coach in the region who worked extensively with Rivera when he was a student at New London High, recalls the young Rivera was pigeon-toed and knock-kneed when he began running, but had a work ethic and intense drive that helped him to excel and succeed.

After practices when everyone else was gone, Higgins said, Rivera would circle the block on his bike and return to run the drills all over again.

"He has a brilliant mind, and you could tell he was motivated, you could see it," said Higgins, who is almost 80. "No matter what the weather was, or whether it was a 5 a.m. practice, he would not allow someone else to work harder. ...He just had that leadership, that dedication and motivation, and he always looked for the positive and was able to accomplish so much."

Rivera was class president during his freshman and sophomore years, and he worked at the old Kelly's hamburgers on Colman Street, where Burger King is today.

"I'd go to school, go to practice, then work nights at Kelly's, go home, pass out, then start the next day at 5, run at 5:30 in the morning, come back home, shower, go to school, and then do it all over again," Rivera said. "My life was full. That's how I lived for four years."

As a freshman at Brandeis, he married and fathered his first child, daughter Amanda, who was born in 1971. (He would have two more children with his second wife, and today has three grandchildren.)

Despite the rigors of academics, running and supporting a new family, Rivera was named the outstanding scholar/athlete at Brandeis in 1974.

"That is the award that I am probably most proud of," he said.

Career begins in New York

Last winter, when Rivera applied for the superintendent's job, it wasn't the first time he sought employment in New London. In 1975, after earning his master's in education from Harvard, he applied for a teaching position but never heard back from the city.

So Rivera started his teaching career in Rochester, N.Y., where he would rise through the system to become superintendent of the massive district — with a $350 million budget and 54,000 students — in 1991. Rivera would later take a sabbatical to get his doctorate in administration, planning and social policy from the graduate school of education at Harvard and, after a time, leave public school administration for the private sector at the for-profit Edison Schools in New York City. But in 2002, Rivera was rehired as Rochester's school superintendent, and in 2006, he was named National Superintendent of the Year by the American Association of School Administrators.

In 2007, he was tapped by then-New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer to become deputy secretary of education. But 16 months into the job, when Spitzer resigned in the wake of a prostitution scandal, Rivera moved on, too, taking another job in the private sector, at Education Learning Alliance Inc., in New York City. By 2013, Rivera was missing public school education and returned to Connecticut as superintendent of schools in Norwalk, about 90 minutes from New London.

Fourteen months later on board the Hibernia, where Foye, Macrino, Allen and Amanti (retired Montville High School principal) were telling him why he should go after the superintendent's job in New London, Rivera's only hesitation was that he had just started in Norwalk.  

"Captain Foye applied pressure, oh yeah, it was a full-court press," said Rivera.

Rivera said he always had an eye towards returning to his hometown, but the timing just had never been right. Now his friends were telling him that New London needed him. When he and his wife, Elizabeth, bought the home on Pequot Avenue five years ago, they planned to use it on weekends, and someday for retirement.

Now it's the home he leaves most days to drive to his office on Williams Street.

"I don't know, I've just always loved New London, I've always loved this community, I loved growing up here," Rivera said. "I love the water, and it's a wonderfully diverse community. I think there is a certain pride that I have and a resilience that was developed through my years here."

On a mission

Rivera still has family here — his mother died in 2010 — and he would come back regularly for holidays, family gatherings and to see friends. He's always had an interest in the city's schools, and now he has a passion for its students and teachers.

"This isn't a job for me," he said after seven months as the city's superintendent of schools. "And when I say this isn't a job, I really mean that. Every day, every evening, every weekend, I'm thinking, what is our next step, what's our next move, what do we got to do to build this great system?

"We gotta think big, because if we don't, we won't get there."

Rivera believes the city's transition to an all-magnet school district, the first in the state, will be a way to infuse dollars, enthusiasm and success into its schools.

"I'm convinced that this is achievable, that it's doable, and that we have a winning formula," Rivera said, adding that the people who conceived the magnet plan and set it in motion deserve a great deal of credit.

"I'm not coming in and starting from scratch," he said. "There's a framework for the magnet school district that started years ago with people who had the foresight. They teed it up for me."

It's Rivera's responsibility to drive the project forward and, as he does, he's thinking about students who, like he did, are growing up in low-income, single-parent homes.

"I'd like to think that in my 38 years of education, that I have learned a lot about what not to do and what to do... to execute a strategy that can actually work and get us to where we want to be," he said. "... And this is where it gets really personal for me, and that is making sure that every single adult in this system believes in every single child that comes through that door.

"Because when I think about the kid who came to school and only had one shirt that he wore for two years until it frayed on the edges, that kid who didn't always get the best meal in town or have a meal in some cases, I think about myself."

Rivera is glad he took the advice of his friends and went after the New London job.

"It is the right time and Rich Foye, in his wisdom, was telling me that. It's the perfect time," he said.

"He's a New London native and he understands," Foye said. "He has roots in New London and I don't just mean going to New London High School. He has an extraordinary story to tell, and he's a known athlete at the local, state and national level. I think Manny will be a game-changer for New London."

Rivera says he is on a mission.

"Young people don't come to school every day because they want to fail. They come because they want to be successful and it is our job to make sure that we create the kind of environment that taps into that, that finds the button and turns it on for that child," he said. "We need to create opportunities, not focus on how poor they are, or what language they speak, or what race or ethnicity they are.

"This is what I have said all my life as an educator and now it is my opportunity to do it in a community that I know and love and in a system that is actually small enough that we can have an impact here."

a.baldelli@theday.com

Twitter: @annbaldelli