Heritage Feature

Heritage Feature

Horacio "Rivets" Rivero, the Navy's first four-star admiral of Latino descent and the U.S. ambassador to Spain during the waning years of Francisco Franco's regime, died September 28, 2000 at 90 years of age. A fourth star was pinned on Rivero's shoulder board in 1964, making him the first Latino to reach that rank. The first Latino admiral in the U.S. Navy was David G. Farragut, who uttered the immortal line, "Damn the torpedoes! Full speed ahead!" Farragut, the son of an immigrant from Spain, became an admiral in 1866. Growing up surrounded by water in his native Puerto Rico, Rivero always longed to go into the Navy. He won an appointment to the U.S. Naval Academy in 1927. Graduating in 1931, third in his class of 441, Rivero became a specialist in ordnance engineering and, later, nuclear weapons. During World War II, he was a gunnery officer aboard the cruisers USS San Juan and USS Pittsburgh in the Pacific theater, earning a ! Bronze Star. In the Korean War, he commanded the amphibious transport USS Noble. By the time of the Cuban missile crisis in October 1962, he was commander of amphibious forces for the Atlantic Fleet. As a nuclear weapons expert, Rivero was privy to the Manhattan Project. After the war, he worked on atomic bomb tests on the Pacific islands of Bikini and Eniwetok. From 1961 to 1968, Rivero was vice chief of naval operations, the Navy's second-ranking post. He spent his last four years in uniform as commander of Allied Forces in Southern Europe for NATO. He was later appointed U.S. ambassador to Spain, and served for two years. In retirement, Rivero served as an adviser to the chief of naval operations, the Naval Academy, and the Naval War College.