When Jorge Hernandez graduated from Roberto Clemente high school a decade ago, he was among the distinct minority in his class who went straight to college. “A lot of kids dropped out. They did drugs, got pregnant, or ran with the gangs,” he recalls. “And that was, and still is, the public’s perception of the school. They tend to think of the bad things. What they don’t realize is that a lot of kids do graduate and start on respectable careers. We don’t ever hear about their stories.”
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So in 1990, with a diploma in TV production from Columbia College in hand, Hernandez decided to do a documentary about 1980s Clemente graduates who’ve succeeded in their own ways. A Look Back and its companion piece, a TV-show episode Hernandez made a year later featuring other accomplished Clemente alumni, will receive their first public screening Thursday at the Chicago Cultural Center as part of the city’s celebration of Hispanic Heritage Month.
It didn’t take him long to carry out his labor of love. A mutual friend put him in touch with Aldo Gandia, a Clemente alum and ex-gang member who had worked as a news producer at Channel Two. “Aldo was already famous when I was at Clemente,” Hernandez says. Gandia readily agreed to participate as a writer and on-screen narrator. With the help of Clemente’s alumni network, Hernandez then picked five worthy yet typical graduates as his subjects: Delwin Rosa (class of ’81), a salesman for Orion Pictures; Evelyn Amador (’83), a grass-roots organizer; Martha Varela (’84), an assistant administrator at WTTW; Juan Gonzales (’80), a paramedic; and Rigoberto Montes (’82), a K-9 officer.
Art accompanying story in printed newspaper (not available in this archive): photo/Peter Barreras.
