Honored Monday, David Rowley Has Led a Life of Service

You might know him as the DARE officer, as the SRO, as the Boat Patrol Officer, as the chairman of the Board of Education. You might know him as a teacher, the head of the science department head at Montville High School, or as the curriculum coordinator. You might know him as a scout leader, a Little League participant, or just a guy who speaks well and drives a hot car.

Chances are, if you live in Montville, you know Dave Rowley, in one capacity or another. 

Rowley was one of the meeting at Montville Town Hall.

The presentation brought applause and accolades. And it only began to tell the story.

MONTVILLE POLICE LT. LEONARD BUNNELL, presenting the award to Rowley, alluded to Rowley's background as a teacher.

He taught for 35 years, 33 of them in Montville High School, after two years in Baltimore City schools. Science was his subject. He became the department head and, in time, curriculum coordinator.

Rowley had started out with the idea of working in a lab, as a scientist, and he chose Broaddus College in West Virginia mainly because it had a hospital on campus.

But as soon as he started taking biology classes, he knew he wanted to teach. He graduated from Broaddus and earned his master’s degree at Penn State. He was raised in Gales Ferry, and so after two years in Maryland, when a job opened up here, he was glad to come back to the area.

ROWLEY AND THE LATE DENNIS MONAHAN JR., who was also honored Monday and was one of Rowley’s closest friends, were sworn in as police officers on the same day in 1987.

Before becoming a Montville Police officer, Rowley had earned certification as a Connecticut Safe Boating instructor, and he says issued licenses to 800 citizens. He had also been hired by the Gardner Lake Authority to patrol the lake. They’d given him a boat and a badge.

Of course, it was a Gardner Lake Authority badge, Rowley says.

“If I stopped anybody, I couldn’t write a ticket,” he says, but he could stop people, and he did.

In 1991, when Rowley was a part-time officer in the Montville Police Department, a local doctor donated a boat and Rowley became the department’s first marine patrol officer. 

“We put ‘Police’ on the side, added a strobe light and a siren, and we were out on Gardner Lake with real authority,” he says.

THEN, HE SAYS, 1999 came along, and it was a big year for him.

He retired from teaching school, the job of DARE officer opened, and a position on the Board of Education opened.

Rowley got them both, and loved them.

During the school year, he worked as a DARE officer, and in the summer, he worked marine patrol.

On the lake, he did lots of BUI stops – boating while under the influence of drugs and/or alcohol.

Having open alcohol in a boat is OK, Rowley says, but not for the driver or a person being towed, such as a water skier.

He remembers one incident when he was chasing a boat whose driver appeared to be intoxicated. The boat was swerving and operating erratically, and then, all of a sudden, it stopped.

Rowley says he thought the driver had decided to surrender. Instead, he says, that driver had simply run out of gas.

THESE DAYS, he works as the chairman of the Board of Education, and also has a television show, “Eye on Education,” which focuses on the people who work to make Montville schools succeed.

The show, which airs on Metrocast, consists of interviews with Montville educators and administrators. It’s about 20-30 minutes long, Rowley says, and he invites the guests and asks the questions.

The show started in January 2010. Rowley says that former Montville High School Principal Tom Amanti had had a show called “The Principal’s Corner,” a periodic broadcast of events and happenings at the high school.

Amanti had had Rowley on when he became the chairman of the Board of Education.

“I loved what he did,” Rowley said, and the idea stuck.

Superintendent Pamela Aubin was his first guest.

Currently, “Eye on Education” is broadcasting an interview with Heather Holmes, Montville’s teacher of the year. On Friday, Rowley will be taping an interview with Amy Espinoza, the principal of the Dr. Charles E. Murphy School.

An upcoming program, Rowley says, will involve an ad-hoc committee that is considering the idea of full-day kindergarten.

The show runs at 2:30 p.m., 4:30 p.m. and 6:30 p.m. daily, on Metrocast Channel 22.

ROWLEY HAS SERVED on the Board of Education for 12 years, and is up for office again. There are four positions open, and four people running for those positions, so chances are, he will have another term.

He says he enjoys being the chairman. He likes being "kept in the loop" by Aubin, and, he says, "Running the meeting is always fun. It's a challenge. I'd rather run the meetings than be a participant," he says.

As for other political offices, Rowley says, he has thought about it.

"I gave the mayor (job) a good look six months ago," but after talking to Mayor Joe Jaskiewicz, "I let go of the idea."

He does not dismiss the notion of running for mayor in the future.

WHEN ROWLEY IS OUT on the water now, chances are he’s out in his own boat with his wife Carol, or fishing with his grandchildren. He took the three oldest out recently, and all three caught fluke.

You might see Rowley cruising around town in his 2011 Camaro, a hot car if there ever was one. He had had a Mini-Cooper and decided to get something bigger. He hadn’t set out to get the Camaro, but he drove it, and that was that. Though the speedometer goes up to 160, he won’t say how fast he's driven it. He was a police officer for all those years, after all.

Rowley says that his family – Carol and their son and daughter, and now grandchildren – have supported him in all he’s done.

And he’s done it, he says, “because I enjoy the town of Montville, and I want to give back.”