By Carol Coultas,Business Writer
From humble beginnings, Richard O’Leary, a native of Auburn, rose to launch a multimillion-dollar cruise company.

AUBURN – Richard O’Leary did a lot of things typical of a boy in the 1940s.

Delivered the Sun and Journal to his neighbors along Spring Street. Picked up odd jobs. Worshipped at St. Joe’s. Played a T-zone defense with a city-league basketball team.

It’s what he did after he graduated from Edward Little that sets him apart.

O’Leary, 73, just retired from a travel company he founded that’s widely credited with helping turn Norfolk, Va., from a dumpy waterfront city into a tourist destination. A seaman all his adult life, O’Leary saw the potential of Norfolk’s harbor and devised a formula to capitalize on it: condense the amenities of a week-long cruise into a three-hour harbor tour and market it to the masses. Today, CI Travel is worth $150 million and operates out of 58 locations nationwide.

“The company I started was a great experiment in capitalism in its purest form,” said O’Leary from his winter home in Naples, Fla. He founded CI Travel after spending years in the U.S. Navy, then as a mate aboard a passenger ship, before accepting a position with the Port Authority in Norfolk.

There, he found 25 investors who also saw the potential in developing a cruise industry in the city’s harbor and each of them ponied up $5,000. Thirty-four years later, that initial investment reaped $483,000 in returns.

“I’d say we all did very well,” he said.

O’Leary’s love of the sea contrasts his disdain over another body of water – the Androscoggin River.

“That was a nasty river then,” he said. “It stunk.”

A family of little means – his father was a longshoreman and logger before settling in Auburn, where he worked for years cleaning out the storm sewers for the city – the O’Learys still occasionally managed to rent a place at Old Orchard Beach. It was there O’Leary grew to love the ocean.

“The first time I saw Old Orchard Beach, I fell in love with it,” said O’Leary. “I stayed in the water under the pier all day long.”

That love took him to the Maine Maritime Academy in 1951, where he and EL buddy Joe Lalansky and former Gov. Ken Curtis were classmates. After graduation, he eagerly left Maine for better job opportunities.

But he still remembers his roots. He returned in 2000 to attend the 50th reunion of his EL class and has been a generous contributor over the years to its scholarship funds. He and his wife, Barbara, have homes in Ogunquit and Kennebunkport, near enough to the South Portland marina where his yacht, La Mia Barbera, is moored.

Although retired, O’Leary said he’s as busy as ever. He and his wife have 14 grandchildren and he still keeps a hand in CI Travel, which is now 100 percent employee-owned, and they are involved in several charities.

Lalansky is pleased for his old friend’s success. He received a copy of a tribute album put together by O’Leary’s wife. It’s a loving testament to a remarkable life.

“I would attribute a lot of the credit for his success to Barbara,” said Lalansky. “Shows what can happen when you marry the right girl. She brought out the better part of Richard.”