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Speaker tells students to make good choices
By Guillermo “Willie” Lopez’s own estimation, his childhood didn’t last very long at all.
“I became a man,” he told Quincy High School and High Tech High students last Thursday, “in grammar school.”
Lopez was born in Mexico, but moved to the United States at an early age with his family. One day, another child stole Lopez’s bicycle. Crestfallen, he returned home and told his father what had happened. His father admonished the boy, telling him to exert force to retrieve what was his. After balking several times at the prospect of confronting the bully, Lopez was finally able to get his bike back. He returned home feeling like a triumphant hero. “To me, that was a big moment,” he said. “That bike was like a trophy.”
Feeling overjoyed, Lopez started to cry. His father exploded in rage.
“He told me to stop crying,” Lopez said. “I said, ‘I can’t stop.’ I was scared, but happy. Then he took off his belt and told me to bend over. He hit me and he hit me extra hard.I was tightening up. But then I kind of floated away from my body and saw myself being hit, but I didn’t feel any pain. I just felt a lot of anger. I wanted my dad to die, which was a tough thing because I loved him. It felt ugly.
“Then I floated back to my body and I started yelling at him. ‘Why are you hitting me?’ He told he that I might be feeling angry, but I wasn’t crying anymore. He said he was teaching me a lesson that men don’t cry. I never cried again.”
Because his father was a migrant worker, his family moved frequently. One day he came home from school and his mother told him, “Empaque sus juguetes.” Pack up your toys.
“I knew what that meant,” Lopez said. “I knew the drill.”
After Lopez threw his belongings on top of the family station wagon, he crawled into the car and waited to be ferried to his family’s next destination. But at that point, a terrorizing thought crashed through his mind: He wouldn’t have time to say good-bye to his friends before leaving town. That thought devastated young Lopez, who had found it tough to make friends at his previous stops due to his ethnicity.
“I wanted to cry,” he said. “But I didn’t. I had been conditioned at that young age. I became a real man in the back of that station wagon.”
After that, Lopez changed. He got in fights at school with other students and teachers, who were befuddled that a bright, seemingly well-adjusted young man who did well in class would have such behavioral problems.
“I got kicked out of schools,” he said. “Nobody understood what was going on in my head. I didn’t know what was going on.”
He was constantly barraged by a harsh reality of farm labor injustice, gangs, drugs and discrimination. Surrounded by these adversities, Lopez fell victim to the clutches of the barrio’s dark side, which interfered with his aspirations of becoming a physician.
He eventually escaped that life and entered the medical field, a journey that led him to become a communicable disease specialist. He developed an expertise in HIV/AIDS and was bestowed an honorary Doctorate of Medicine degree from La Universidad Autónoma de Baja California, Mexico, in 2002 for his years of extensive service and knowledge in the field of HIV/AIDS.
But Lopez, now also a nationally-known motivational speaker, is feeling the reverberations of the actions of his youth even today.
“There’s nothing glamorous about the gang life,” he said. “I’ve gotta live with the nightmares. For me to talk about it, it’s like therapy. There were people that didn’t give up on me. That’s the reason I’m here today. I pray for and thank those people every day who made a difference in my life. I want to make amends because I hurt a lot of people.”
Lopez began his presentation wearing dark sunglasses and jewelry to replicate the look of a gangster. Midway through, he shed the street attire in favor of a shirt and slacks to signal the transformation in his own life.
He ended his presentation by imploring the several hundred students to take charge of their own lives in order to avoid the mistakes he made when he was younger.
“If you’re involved in any of this, if you’re a ‘wanna-be,’ it’s time for you to make a decision,” he said. “Think about your actions. Realize that there’s people around that do care. You are responsible for making your own decisions. Making mistakes is OK, but it’s not OK if you’re making somebody else’s mistakes. Go to college. Get an education. You’ll find that’s the best way.”
Lopez was brought to Quincy by QHS senior Danielle Talley for her senior project. Lopez made three presentations — at the junior high in the morning, at QHS in the afternoon and an evening version delivered in Spanish for parents at the high school’s performing arts center.
“I think all three of the presentations went extremely well,” Talley said. “Mr. Lopez was excellent in his delivery and connection to the students at each presentation. Everyone involved worked hard to make this happen, and, as they say, everything happens for a reason.
“I believe Mr. Lopez was definitely supposed to come and deliver his message to Quincy. Hopefully his presence and message to the youth and parents of Quincy will not only impact people, but become a significant catalyst to solving the problems the youth face today. Overall, this has been a very rewarding senior project.”
David Talley, the QHS principal, was as impressed with Lopez’s presentation as his daughter was.
“Whenever there is a presenter, I hope they reach one or two people, and if they do, then it is a success,” he said. “When I was having dinner with Willie last (week) I was very impressed by his very open and honest approach to his work. His stories come from the heart and it really is about his life.
“What I wanted is for students to hear a message of hope that no matter where you come from, your future is up to you and education plays a big part in a successful future. I certainly think that because of his background as a migrant student who moved repeatedly during his school career, was raised in poverty and got involved in gangs, that many of our students could relate to his message more readily than if it were delivered by someone like me who came from an entirely different background.”
