Names and Places of UTSA: Tomás Rivera (revisited)

This month we continue “Names and Places of UTSA,” a blog series on university history, with a post by archives student assistant, Marissa Del Toro. This month’s blog post returns to an influential figure within UTSA’s early history, Tomás Rivera, who was covered in an earlier post.

Portraits of Dr. Tomás Rivera, 1976. Photo source: Gil Barrera Photographs of the University of Texas at San Antonio, MS 27, UTSA Libraries Special Collections.

This remembrance of Tomás Rivera begins with a personal anecdote from my childhood in California. Since 1986, my mother has worked at the University of California, Riverside (UCR), so my sisters and I became acquainted with the campus from a very early age. On special occasions my father would bring us to the campus to visit her at work. Our visits to UCR were a treat for my sisters and me, as we were also…