Victor D. López, Author

I began my longest free verse poem nearly a decade ago when I published Unsung Heroes, a four-part poem about my grandparents who each lived incredibly difficult and inspiring lives in different ways during and after the Spanish Civil War, in my first book of poetry, Of Pain and Ecstasy: Collected Poems. In my recently released second book of poems, Echoes of Dawn at Dusk: Collected Poems, Volume 2, I continued that poem, adding a fifth and sixth part for my parents, Felipe and Lita, who themselves lived incredibly difficult lives on three continents and overcame adversity through their work ethic, never once giving up despite overwhelming odds against them, and never once sacrificing what they believed to be right for the sake of expediency. In my dad's case, who died in 2016, I wrote Unsung Heroes #5 days after his passing. My mom's poem, Unsung Heroes #6, I started towards the end of her four-year convalescence and losing battle against the only enemy she could not defeat: dementia. I completed it within days of her death as well in 2018. I could never do them justice and am a poor living  legacy of their lives of sacrifice, sustained hardship and heroic battles overcome by reliance on each other and on their hard work. They rose and fell many times due to circumstances beyond their control--war, corrupt government, unsustainable social policies, health issues and simple bad luck. But they were never victims. They pulled themselves up by their bootstraps when their relative wealth vanished and found a way through honest hard work when businesses failed through unsustainable economic policies, never asking or receiving government help or using available legal means to avoid their obligations. As I wrote in one of my books dedicated to them, no matter what I may achieve in life, I will never be their equal. It at once a source of pride and shame for me, the knowledge that despite having received every advantage thanks to their personal sacrifice and constant support, I could never be the son or legacy they deserved. There is no justice in this world, but I believe that they will have received their just rewards in the next. It is that belief that sustains me.

This is a continuation of my reading three additional complete chapters from my novel, Hire Lernin'.

My first novel involves the bittersweet journey of a young, idealistic, naïve attorney who takes on the role of academic dean at a for-profit business school in New York City in the late 1980s knowing very little about the industry. Unable to accept the way things are, he immediately launches into a personal quest to change lives for the better in an environment where only the bottom-line matters. Hard work and an entrepreneurial spirit quickly propel him to professional success, but at a deep personal cost in the process as he learns critical life-altering lessons about himself, about leadership, about for-profit and not-for-profit higher education, and about love. The novel is fiction based on my own experiences as academic dean of a for-profit business school as a newly minted lawyer in circumstances quite similar to those of the protagonist and in a similar frame of a bit more than a year. 

The novel offers a rare peek behind the curtain of the for-profit education industry that only a former insider could write. Beyond the drama, tension, humor and conflicting love stories of the narrative, the novel raises some very real, compelling and little discussed issues about the failings of both for-profit and traditional non-profit public and private institutions in meeting the needs of students who need meaningful job training or retraining in a reasonably short time to provide meaningful work and a living wage for themselves and their families. For economic and political reasons, public institutions such as community colleges and schools of technology have largely abandoned what was once a primary mission of providing workers with meaningful skills in the trades and office support positions for business and industry and have largely become feeder schools for baccalaureate programs that often do not provide the skills employers need. It is very expensive to provide the labs and equipment needed to train students as mechanics, machinists, plumbers, electricians, welders, and a host of other blue collar professions that provide good jobs, high pay and the opportunity for individuals to build their own businesses. Educating students in the liberal arts, humanities and the social sciences, on the other hand, generally requires minimal resources and no costly labs by comparison. Liberal arts degrees can also lead to rewarding careers, though usually only after many years of study. And in the professions, graduate degrees are likely to be a requirement for employment and/or advancement. 

I was one of the fortunate students who could have studied any career of choice with no concern about having to feed a family or keep a roof over my head thanks to very supportive parents. But I know were that not the case that my training at Brooklyn Technical High School that besides college-level coursework in the liberal arts, math and sciences provided me with significant tools in electronics, electricity and mechanics that would have made me highly employable in any of these fields out of High School at two or three times the starting salary I could have commanded with my B.A. in Queen's College's English Honors Program with high honors designation four years later. My dad as a world-class machinist/mechanic earned more than twice my salary when he retired, though I was a tenured professor in the SUNY system at the time. 

In the past two decades, certain segments of public and private non-profit education and for-profit education have come to mirror one another in their common failings--something that is touched upon in this novel but I will fully explore in a planned sequel that will also be fiction based on my experience as both a professor and administrator in non-profit public and private institutions.

Hire Lernin' is now available in hardcover, paperback and eBook versions at Amazon, Barnes and Noble and other booksellers. 

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