MU | Features
Julio Luevano ’ 16
Immigrant follows his dream but nobody ’ s gonna offer it to you unless you look for it . That ’ s what I did .
“ I always thought about bettering myself and either finding another job or going to school and getting educated . My goal was ( to be ) always moving , trying to find something that was better . I ’ m the kind of person I don ’ t like to be on the same spot all the time . I want to move up , and I tried to do whatever it takes . If you don ’ t try you will never know how far you can go .”
And how far he has come . Those tears : They are the tears of a man who came to America under cover of night , who felt the whisper of a bullet pass his cheek during his perilous passage , who landed in North Manchester because the friend with whom he came had relatives here . He spoke no English . Everyone he reached out to for help either shied away or lied to him because they feared associating with him . Some of his co-workers called him racial epithets and told him to go back where he came from .
“ I ’ m not really saying what I did was right ,” says Luevano , who was 21 when he crossed the border , leaving behind a hard-working family in Aguascalientes , Mexico . “ I should have done it the right way . But when you don ’ t have any option , it ’ s the only option you have , really . So you just take the chance , and either you ’ re gonna make it or not .
“ I feel lucky I made it .”
He did make it . An avid soccer player , he approached then-Manchester-coach Dave Good after a game and asked if he could join the team . Good told him he needed to be enrolled in school . And for that to happen , Luevano realized , he would have to go back to Mexico and petition for residency .
“ I told the coach ‘ I cannot do it now , but save me a spot , because I will do it someday ,’” Luevano recalled .
Someday came , miraculously . Luevano went back to Mexico and spent almost six months there , separated from his child and his pregnant wife , Danielle , who bore their second child while he was gone . More than once , Luevano says , he thought about sneaking over the border again . But he decided he needed to do it right this time .
Immigrant Julio Luevano ’ 16 , enrolled at Manchester at 32 and graduated on May 14 at age 36 . He ’ s pictured here at Commencement with ( from left ) his soccer coach Dave Good , his mother and one of his brothers who came from Mexico to see him graduate .
When he came back , the Manchester family took him in – even though , at 32 , he was a decade older than even undergraduate seniors . President Dave McFadden pledged to do everything he could to get him into school . Good took him under his wing and welcomed him to the soccer program . Manchester Spanish teacher Arturo Yañez , seeing a kindred spirit in Luevano , encouraged him to pursue his dreams .
Then came May and that walk across the stage , a once-impossible dream clutched in one arm .
“ So did you cry ?” he was asked .
Julio Luevano ’ s smile lit up the unseasonably cold , gray afternoon . “ I did ,” he laughed .
By Benjamin Smith
Manchester | 27