Sitting in her Bedford Park office smoking an extra-long Kent cigarette, Rita Kessler, the venerable den mother of Community Board 7 (CB7), spent a recent Friday morning spinning tales about her early years as district manager.

"Oh, we used to laugh and laugh all the time," she says in her thick throaty Bronx accent. "I used to have to kick Nora [former Chair Nora Feury] and Dennis [late former board member Dennis Nagel] out of the office and tell them to come back when they stopped laughing."

Kessler talked about how she and Feury were the "good cop, bad cop" of the board and how they used to fight bitterly like sisters (Kessler usually prevailed, she says with a wink), but always kissed and made up in the end.

But now, after 18 years at the board, countless cigarettes and lots of laughs, Kessler is calling it quits.

This Friday, Kessler will resign from her post as district manager and retire from working for the city (previously, Kessler worked as an assistant teacher and an assistant district manager) after 33 years of service.

"I am very happy," Kessler says. "I’m at a very good time in my life."

Born in the Bronx to the parents of German immigrants, Kessler grew up near Crotona Park when "the Bronx was the best place to be," she says. "Everyone moved up here because the air was cleaner. There’s nothing like the Bronx."

(Kessler wouldn’t give her age.)

Every Wednesday as a teenager, Kessler went to Poe Park to dance, hang out with friends and meet boys.

After graduating from Herman J. Ritter High School, Kessler worked as a paraprofessional, or assistant teacher, at PS 7 for several years before she decided to get her education degree at Lehman College "as a mature woman." By that time, she had married and raised two children.

But Kessler decided she didn’t really want to be a teacher and became active in Bronx politics. She joined the now-defunct Riverdale Democratic Club and became friends with George Friedman, the state assemblyman who represented what is now most of CB7.  

"If you wanted to be anyone, you had to belong to a club," Kessler says about the old days. When people had problems with landlords, city agencies, anything, they went to their local club, Kessler says.

It was Friedman who secured Kessler a job as assistant district manager at CB7 when she graduated from Lehman in 1989. Four years later, she became district manager.

"When she first became district manager she was very green," said Feury, who was chair of the board at the time. "She was kind of on her own and learned on her own."

But Feury says Kessler learned quickly and figured out how to get things accomplished for the community as well as appease the politicians. Kessler says she’s most proud of her ability to get city agencies to respond to complaints that came into the board, which included everything from drug dealing to tree pruning.

"It was very dicey at times," Feury says about the political climate during the mid-1990s. "[District manager] is a very political position, but we always worked for the quality of life in the community."

Kessler says that the biggest thing she learned was to respect the city agencies and in return they will give you respect back.

"There’s nothing in Community Board 7 that hasn’t been touched by Rita and it’s because of the person she was and her relationships with city agencies," Feury says.

Karen Argenti, a former board member (who was married to Dennis Nagle), remembers how tight-knit the board was back when Kessler first started and says the district manager knew how to get things done.

"She has a surprising personality," Argenti says. "You wouldn’t expect her to be the Pit Bull that she is. She’ll be missed."

While not going into detail about why she chose now to retire, Kessler simply says, "It’s time for me to move on." She’s spending her last days finishing up the budget and getting things in order for her replacement, who will have to learn on his or her own much like Kessler did.

Aside from spending more time with her grandchildren, Kessler says the first thing she is going to do as a retiree is drive to Florida (where she has a home) in her Cadillac.

"I’m going to go and hang out for about a month and see what it’s like to be a Floridian," she says.