every community has certain people founders as we refer to them lives have made such a difference in their community that they have permanently impacted the lives of future generations often we only hear the names of these people we see them on plaques in statues as names on the side of buildings and company during the next hour you will have the rare opportunity to witness the story of an incredible person a person who has made west michigan what it is today  welcome to west michigan barbara fi today story is about an extraordinary woman who has touched the lives of many in our community she arrived in holland at a very young age and challenge what were then the traditional norms for hispanic women armed with life's experiences and an ability to serve as both a voice and a leader for minorities she was a contributing force behind the development of the community action house her persistence and passion earned her two master's degrees and this says you cation combined with her i'm going commitment or a driving force behind what is now the community health cent peter my story begins in blue town texas i was born in a shack my mother was very poor and had been abandoned by my father and she was alone and her brother was at her side when she it was time to give birth and it was a cold rainy november night and her brother ran to the doctor's house to go fetch him and said it was time for his sister to deliver the baby and so on a cold november night i was born without any clothes really my mother wrapped me up in this little blanket that she had and so began my life my mother was one of five children and she had four brothers and she was the oldest so she raised her brothers are her parents were both both passed away when she was by the time she was thirteen my mother was an orphan both parents and so she struggled and i think her her determination her her fight somehow or other pas to me as i was born and looking back and everything and especially when i started writing my book and thinking about well what am i going to call this book what do i want to say i look back at how my life started and i say yes yes i can see where though so that is why the book was entitled that as i grew we were in texas my mother worked as several different jobs in restaurants washing dishes trying to make enough money to sustain herself and me and her brothers helped her my father was not exist and he did not have anything to do with us so that was difficult for my mother and i think in the process of raising her brother she was a very strong disciplinary and so i never got away with things my mother was always disciplining me and it wasn't always i think in those days if they would head protective services they would have pulled me from my mother because she was a strong disciplinary and but obviously i turned out or are right my mother met my my stepfather is and they fell in love and married and so this wonderful man came into my life and we were very happy until he decided that the work in texas was not sufficient to support a family and he had family in holland michigan so they wrote back and said come here there are there are a lot of opportunities for work so come and so he went ahead and i for a while was kind of glad because it was my mother and me alone again and prior to leaving my son my stepfather had given me a dog and so i had this dog that i i fell in love with and she was my partner so i really didn't miss my step day and because i thought we were going to be ok he was going to come to michigan to work and then come back to texas and be with us again so it was a happy time for me and tell one day my mother got a letter from my stepfather saying i want you to come to holland there are a lot of opportunities here and i think we can make a good life here well my mother told me this that we were coming to holland in those days i didn't speak english well i spoke with spanish and so they got together a group of people who were going to come to holland michigan and they herded us in a truck and i was so angry picked up my dog and i wanted to bring my dog my mother had first has said no you cannot take the dog but i cried so much and made up made such a a stink about it that she finally said ok you can take the dog and the truck driver was not happy with the dog being in the group but he said ok so we get into this truck this covered with a canvas and off we come to michigan it took us i don't know how long i bet it was about at least five days to get here it was hot and we were tired and of course i sat there with my dog and you know sometimes little dogs here and so when i was telling my dog the story about why he did to come to this horrible town the dog's eyes were teary and so i thought she was crying with me at one point there was a checkpoint where immigration even in those days would check and they made us all get out of the truck and ask for peepers and then they came to my mother and me and she presented the papers and the officer grabbed the dog and i started to cry because i thought he was going to take the dog so he gave the dog back and he said no go ahead we could get back into the truck so we finally arrived in this town of holland  michigan they drop the drop off point was where the ole sugar factory used to be and was there was a basement there and we all hurdled into the basement and and the word got out to my stepfather that the truck had arrived and he could come and pick us up and so he did come in and get us i got to west east ninth street that is where he was staying with his relatives and the first person i saw when i got off the vehicle was a little girl with blonde hair pigtails who came over and said hello to me and started speaking to me while i blew up because i didn't understand what she was saying and she didn't understand what i was saying but we became very good friends as the years went on her name was barbara hardy and then came the time for me to go to school peter endured her early years of education with the help of dedicated teachers school became a rewarding experience that would help mold her into the professional she is today my mother took me to the school to enroll me it was lincoln school i hated school i think if i could have been a juvenile delinquent at that time i would have done it i didn't like the school because i didn't speak english no one understood me was very lonely and during recess i spent my whole recess at the corner of the school sitting there crying and it was it was a difficult time for me and every time i get out of school i run home and pick up my dog and sit in a corner and cry with the dog because i just hated it so much as the time when i obviously i was held back a couple years because i didn't speak english and at one point the the teacher decided that i had a learning disability and that i would be better off in special education classes there was one teacher who was a principal of lincoln school at that time many binet who came to my rescue and said no this child really doesn't have a learning disability she has a language barrier and i will work with her and so they'll they said ok let's see how that works so many took me under her wing and she lived in  lived and i am twenty one our chicago drive in a little house way back in the woods and she would pick me up every morning and i'd have to go to school very early because she was there early but i'd write in with her and i learn english from her so that when i went into her grade which was the third grade i was doing quite well with english and just mastering the language pretty well i i want to back up thought a little bit to this to my first experience in school i just forgot about them but i was trying so hard to fit in that this little boy in front of me and his desk was in front of me and had a crush on me and so he would move over so that i could copy his work and soul when the paper when the teacher came and said you copied as i shook my head no i i didn't copy yes you did well i had copied jimmy's name along with everything else so that's how she found out i had copied so that was a cute story there i'll never forget that because you know as i as i grew older i always made sure when i'm copying something make sure you don't copy the person's name but back to the third grade i did very well in third grade and then my mother decided it's time for you to go to catholic school because we were catholic and i had to make my first holy communion with again another transition which i didn't like too well i had to leave my friends behind and i had just adjusted very well to to the environment now i had to adjust to another environment a catholic school my experience in catholic school was not a good one either and that is because i think i integrity is the nuns right from the get go for one thing and you know i helped in tegan eyes and by calling them penguins they look like being once you know it and if any nuns are listening to this i apologize i don't care to insult them but at my age at that time they looked like being ones and so i would sit out there in with the other kids and make fun of the ping ones well one day one of the nuns came out to the playground and we were joking about the penguins and then the nun said what did you say and i turned around and looked at her innocent innocently and said i didn't see anything she says yes you did i heard you you called me a penguin and so i was very naive and i said i didn't call you  when i called the other nuns appealing when well needless to say i was sent to the cloak room and i spent a lot of time in the cloak room while i was in catholic school along about the fifth grade the nun started to teach a form of english that included conjugation and diagramming and i just happened to get the chicken pox i think during that time so i was out of school when i came  back the sister called my particular role to go up to the board to diagram some sentences well i stood there and i looked and i looked and i looked and i couldn't i couldn't figure out what in the heck are these people doing so from the back of the room at the top of her voice sister says what is this and she called me an ass at the top of her voice and that hurt so badly and from then on i started to skip school i made all kinds of excuses i had a stomach ache i had a headache and one time the phone rang and they asked for my mother stevie and i thought was one of her friends well it just happened to be sister mary so i'd sell and told my mother that i had been skipping school so of course my mother confronted me with what she had just learned and i said yes i hate the school i don't want to go to some that school and  my mother said you have to so he went to visit the the monsignor and saw i could explain myself and it didn't go well because he told my mother i was going to grow up to be a juvenile delinquent and so my mother decided to pull me out of that school and then i wound up at beechwood school which was the best thing that could have happened to me i love between school mr van royalty was my teacher  and i loved him dearly he helped me achieve things that i didn't think i could he made me believe in myself and that helped me and my parents moved to town and so then i want up in but again i like doubt because they had her mind as a teacher and she was great again she was strict stern but helped me learn a lot of things and so i was believing in myself and it was just like building my strength academically that i could do things and then i went on to how in junior high during all this time in elementary school i had been a major at in the elementary school band first hispanic elementary band majorette and then i went into the junior high i was in the band there and then i went on to high school and then in the high school they said i was too short to be  director and i stood up to him and i said i believe i can do this so they let me into the band saw i got into the hauen high school band and from there on it was  good until i got into the eleventh grade if i joined dutch dance i had to do one of the other i couldn't do both i'd like to do that stance because i hadn't done them before so i wanted to try something different so i did get a partner and begin that stance of well wouldn't you know it my appendix took precedence and i had to drop out of dutch dance so by this time i had dropped out of band and stand so my junior year in high school just was very quiet but it was time for me also to look at what is it that i want to do when i graduate from high school and i desperately desperately wanted to be a nurse i had researched the nursing profession and i felt that i would make a good nurse and so i went to the high school counselor and told her that i wanted to become a nurse and it was at that time that she told me that i really did not have the grades to get into a nursing school and she said you know what you'll make a very good secretary or a very good sales person and i thought to myself secretary my gosh i can only type about ten words a minute how in the heck am i going to be a great secretary so i decided no this is not what i want so when i graduated from high school i married my sweetheart and decided to give up on the dream it's not worth it experience in the to interject here that coming from the hispanic culture hispanics usually don't question authority the counselor to me was authority and therefore i wasn't going to question her her  recommendation and state i decided that i was not going to pursue my dream and gave it up so i got married and started having a family and my husband was brought up in a family that was very mexican tradition father was a head of the household and although he was born in texas he was raised with that that tradition in the mexican tradition obviously i have been raised in holland so might my traditions were  little bit different by this time and so that was quite a culture clash however we made it in spite of everything and i decided i'm not going to buck the system  will be the head of the household and we had our children and what was difficult was trying to find a house during that time when i would call on the phone and say hello this is this you have an apartment for rent or you have a house for rent i'd like to come and see it and then they'd say oh yes it's still available and then i give the last name and then they say oh you know what there's another couple looking at it we'll call you back and then they'd call back and say it has already been rented so i realized right then and there that howland did not have a fair housing code and i would say to my husband we're never going to find a home this way we found a home eventually but it wasn't the home that we wanted and it was with his parents so living with my mother in law was not exactly the best thing but because she was very traditional in her ways and i felt that i wasn't living up to her expectations as a quote mexican wife and saw there was a lot of friction between us and finally  there was a teacher who owned a home on the north side of holland and she sold us that our first home and we moved to butternut dr with our or three children then and we're very happy there and but then i started getting involved in community because i did not like what i was experiencing and i've always been a fighter that's what i said the beginning of of this interview is that i've always been a fighter so yes yes i can and watch me so i got involved in community any which way i could involved in some committees speaking at churches and during that time the thrust was to get an agency started that would help newcomers to holland get a start in this community and that was community action house i was very involved in in speaking before churches and saying why the need was to lend a helping hand to newcomers to holland and so community action house became a reality and i remember the first community action house was the paddles house on eighth street we cleaned their house and it was hot that day and we were there cleaning the house getting it ready so that it could be opened ask committee action house and we worked many hours many many hours and finally became a reality then i was asked to serve on the human relations commission and i agreed to do that because i had a bone to pick how i didn't have a fair housing code and i was one of the first things that i said as i went into the being a member of the commission we need something that's going to protect people their rights to have a home and so howland fashioned its first fair housing code it was flimsy i'm sure but it was a start and something that had not been there and from there on i just continued to be involved in many things during that time i gathered a group of men at my house and started talking about getting an organization started that would meet the needs of the latino community well the men were kind and listen to me and obviously you know hispanic men are not going to sit well with a woman being in charge of everything and i learned that very quickly so i turned everything around and let one of the men take take the reins and said but i was saying this is what we need to do we need to develop this we need this we gave that organization the name of latin american society and that was in one thousand nine hundred sixty five it became an agency and i was the one who borrowed some bylaws from another organization and then fashion the bylaws for latin american society and then it became a reality well enough and one of our first tests as an organization was to have a feast and a queen contest and we decided to approach the city of holland about sponsoring a float in the two uptime festival that did that sit well because they wanted their festival their festival to very dutch and to bring in the hispanic culture would take away from their culture and i understand that very well at that time i didn't but now i do because there are certain things that have to be respected and one's culture is something that we need to respect and so now i understand that but i still fight them on it our first fiesta was held at west side of what high school gym and pete room was the superintendent then and was kind year the fiesta became bigger and bigger and then we moved to moved it over to the civic center as i look back on fiesta and its small beginnings to the fiesta of two thousand and four where ther over twenty thousand people i sit back and say wow this is something what have we started but it is it's an accomplishment it's an honor but most of all it is something that we can share with the other community members of our culture and be part of holland i feel that that is how we become part of holland we at that time i also started a radio program i went to w h d c and spoke to bill gargantua and i said you know what mr going to get a w h t c needs some programming that's in spanish because the hispanic community in holland is growing and we need to have something and he said well let me think about it and you come back so i did go back and then he said i tell you what we can have a spanish program but there is one catch and he says you will have to do the show i said mr g have no idea how to run a radio shell well he says that's it take it or leave it i said ok i'll do it well my first show was supposed to be thirty minutes long it was only twenty five  it was recorded and i didn't know beings about what i was saying or doing and i knew i could play music and do these things and and twenty five minutes seem like nothing like a minute so i got through my first show of k and then i decided i need to have another person out here with me because i'm not going to do this alone i don't have the experience so i found a gentleman who had been a radio personality in mexico he says enough time and he's what are you saying i says we need more time so he said ok so they moved the program up to an hour and we continued to work on that and then mr gomes had to leave the program and then i found another gentleman tony gammas who helped me with the program for quite a while and we continued to grow the program and and then tony had to leave the program and then i had another tony come and help me tony but alice and then he moved back to texas and so his ex wife came in and continued to do the show marie put alice to do the show with me and along about the time when marie came on board i went back to the station manager and i said you know this isn't enough time and he just looked at me rolled his eyes and he says what do you mean i said we need more time sample we need more time so they moved the program up to three hours and that was fine and it continued to girl and the last time i went to the station manager we had the d c changed owners and i asked for more time an show is on four hours and i have a woman by the name of an essential is helping me with the program i always like to do the program with a partner because being the distract me you have to play the discs and you have to the commercials and sometimes you need a little bit of wind in between there so you can do all of these things so a partner is real good and it also gives me a chance to take off on a sunday instead of being there every single sunday without without fail so it's been an interesting thing i've learned about radio things that i didn't know and it's it's kind of a benefit being a radio personality because when i go to mexican functions in some of the to how music stars come in as a oh you have a radio program let me give you my music so you can play it so you can have it's kind of nice  back to being involved in in the holland in community i've been involved in so many boards in and like the community foundation board and any time that i agreed to volunteer on a board it was because i believed in the mission of that agency i did not want to be a token mexican on any board and therefore i want to be a working person on their board to give what i about my community and bring it forth to the board so they can then meet the needs in some way of my community to so always that's been the focus when i join a board it is because i believe while experiencing the full time duties of being a mom that peter had a yearning to accomplish more with her life with determination in one hand and a strong will in the other she started her educational journey at grand valley state university long about this time i got this and in this desire to get more education and this was in one nine hundred seventy eight seventy seven the whole story started  wanted to do something with my life i was tired of hearing this well mrs reyes you know you you you would be good but you just don't have the education and again back to my book c so one day and the spur of the moment i sent my kids off to my mother's house and i got in the car i didn't know how in the world to get to grand valley but i had heard that it was a very good school and us thirty one north to m forty five so that's a long way around when i am forty five and there was grand valley and drove in first person i saw us and hey how does one go about enrolling  school where do i go all and the young man said oh you got to go run here and here finally found the office and walked in there i bet my hair was just standing up on edge by this time because it was hot and walked in there and i said i need to talk to someone about enrolling here and they asked me to have a seat and pretty soon a young woman comes out calls me in and i go in there and we started talking about what i wanted to do i told her i desperately wanted to get an education i said but i'm going to be honest with you before we get any further i don't have any money to go to school and i don't have the grades i was told in high school i didn't have the grades to go on to college well she looks at me she says the money part's no problem we can probably find you some some assistance somehow or you can get financial aid or borrow money so she went over all those things and i thought ok i can do that she's now the grades i need to look at your grades first i said ok she said did you bring a transcript of your grades i said no she is that's the first thing you need to do and you need to get it transcript of your grades send them here to the college and then we'll talk about whether or not you can come here i was so excited it came back to holland in a long way and went to holland high and went to the office and i said i would like a transcript of my grades and procedure should i think it was a dollar and then they put my transcripts in a little envelope with a little on high school seal on it and i think that's so i wouldn't open it in change the grades i was so excited i went back to that place again and got to the office and i said i need to talk to the counselor i was talking to well the woman was so surprised to see me that she agreed to see me and she's yet to money and so she opens the envelope and she sits back in her chair and she says tell me again why you didn't go to college and i said well i didn't have the grades and she says you had a three point zero grade average and i said well yeah i knew that and she is you could have gotten into quite a few colleges well i don't know if anyone has experienced this but when you become angry your heart just starts to pound my heart was pounding and i could feel myself clenching the chair because i was so angry and then i just calmed down and i said ok what do i have to do well she said what is it that you want to do i said i don't know i want to work with people so she started down the line and i figured nursing is out i'm too old for that so she started down the line of careers and she came on to social work and i said i'll take that one that's how i pick my career of social work by hit and miss but i didn't make a mistake because i love to work with people and social work is a very rewarding career so i'm not i don't regret that for one minute  so then i decided yeah i want to come to school so i get all the paperwork i filled it out with home and now my husband didn't know one thing about what i had done  this was going to be a challenge so i made a very special supper and i told the kids what i had done they were all excited we sat around the table and and they were my husband got home from work supper was ready i think he was surprised to see supper was ready but very wonderful supper and as he's eating i asked him how was your day go and he says ok and i says well i had a very wonderful day too and he says what did you do i said i drove over to grand valley  and enroll in school and he was about ready to put a fork full of food in his mouth and he put it down he said you did what and i said i went to grand valley to enroll in school and says why did you do that and i said well because i wanted to go i want to go to school and of course the kids were all quiet stiffer the board and he said we'll discuss this later so i knew that he didn't one discuss this in front of the kids and so after the kids went to bed he said now why do you want to go to school he says you have five children you have an obligation here and i am the provider here not you and i said i just want to do this for us and i said i think that if i get an education will be better off and he says we are ok now and so we dropped the subject didn't discuss it and then i was very sad but i figured what are my chances of getting into college at this age without money and i still had that feeling that i was not college material so i figured i'll never make it saul just let it go oh well a few weeks maybe a month or so later here comes this letter from grand valley and my heart was just pounding i was scared i was excited i didn't even want to open it i sat it on the kitchen table for i don't know how long i finally opened it and of course it said can gradually and then i just  i think i could've gone right through the roof then i was accepted for the freshman year to start that fall and again another special supper to tell my husband the good news and  i don't believe that he he actually was against my getting an education i believe that he felt that the family was going to suffer in the process by my going to school and so he was not too happy with my going off to school and laid down a few rules about if i'm going to go to school then i had to have the children well groomed when they went to school i had to have supper ready i had everything that i was doing prior to going to school had to remain the same and i figured who are you know what could go wrong with this i have a time bake oven i mean i'll get up early i'll do all of these things i can do it i did do it i used to get up very early in the morning to get him off to work and then get the kids ready for school and then off i go all the classes that i selected were classes that fit into my kids school schedule and that's how i did it in those days grand valley was and of course i wrote my paper about how i wanted to go to school and want to do all these wonderful things and how i was doing all these other wonderful things as a housewife and and a student so i felt i had done a great job in writing that paper so when she had the papers back she said lou i need to talk to you and of course right back to that old feeling of you don't have what it takes it stays in you and that's exactly what i thought she was going to do is saying you wrote a terrible paper wad so she said down and talk to me and she said you really wrote a good paper she says but i am concerned and i said why she said because i believe that if you continue to go this the way you are you will not finish school you will drop out and she says not because you don't have the ability but it's because you are trying to be a super person and you can't do that and she said ask your husband to help i says wait a minute as i'm married to hispanic you think i'm going to go home and tell my husband dear you're going to do the dishes tonight it's your turn to cook i says i don't think so it's not going to work that way she's well it's up to you and she says but i can guarantee you that if you don't change this you will not get through school i cried all the way home it was very difficult me to for me to accept the fact that i might have to drop out of school something that i had longed for for so long and now someone is telling me again you're not going to make it but this time it was different she didn't tell me i was not going to make it because i didn't have the brains she told me i wasn't going to make it because of the way i was trying to do it but in my mind i didn't see that got home and the kids were home from school and i sat down and said to them here's what's going on and they said we'll help and each one of them took a chore and i was surprised that they wanted to do this and i realized then i do have the support of my family and so started a different stage of my life the kids began to to support me and doing whatever they had to my husband was very reluctant yet he still wanted that to be in control of his family and i was busy trying to change everything and then he got home from work one day and the supper was then because i had decided i am going to do what dr hedge strums said i'm going to ask my family to help and so he came home from work and supper was ready and he said why isn't supper ready and i turned around and i never have raised my voice to my husband i says of years so while i use different words but as if you're so darn hungry fix it yourself i thought oh boy here comes he was angry but my husband's not a violent person never has been never will be he just turned around and walked away and mumbled something like he knew that this was going to happen and then for a while there i got the silent treatment to see what what i would do my mother was not any help because my mother told me that i was really very foolish going to school a woman who has five children has no place in school that was for young women and that if i lost my husband it would be no one's fault but mine because after all i decided to choose this it was a while before but husband came around and i had to take algebra algebra was one of my worst worst subjects because i'm not i'm a math person and one night i was working there the tears were just coming down mix couldn't get a problem and i think everything was starting to to fall in me and i was beginning to break like the dr suzanne had said it would happen and then my husband got up and i turned around i said i realise that the lights are on and i'm sorry i said i will turn the lights off and go to bed and he says no he says why don't you just put that away he says i can help you in the morning turned around and looked at him i said you're going to help me says he with the continued support of her family peter realized she could accomplish any  age she pursued both her education and a successful professional career helping those in need so everything changed then from there on i finished grand valley at the top of my class and in one thousand nine hundred one i was selected to be the outstanding hispanic college graduate student and i went to lansing to receive a an award from the department of education and i took my husband with me and he was part of the peacock just being there to accept that award and then on the way home he says well this is it isn't it and i looked at him i says where i don't know i don't know there's a graduate school he says ok he says if that comes we will do it but he said we will do it and i got a job at how in community hospital in one thousand nine hundred one in their social work department and started off as a medical social worker and two years later i kept that it again i enrolled at western michigan university and for the graduate program in social work and this time i had the support of my family i knew i had that support so i excelled there too by the time i graduated from western i graduated with a three point six grade average not the best but hey it was ok for me and i also the good thing about western michigan was that i got my education paid forth through a professional grant that was called the thurgood marshall grant professional grant and so my education was paid for that way there and so then i went climbing up the ladder of success is they say i became the supervisor of the department but i decided to leave holland hospital and i'm a very spiritual person and i've always asked god to lead me to where he needs me not to where i need to be but where he needs me and there was an opening at catholic social services and i remember praying and saying ok got you you need to tell me what it is that i need to do and i will fall what cafe social services was not even meeting the salary that i was gay at home hospital and so i told him i couldn't i couldn't afford to do that and well done if they didn't come back and meet it and so yeah i left holland hospital and went to catholic social services and started l central here in holland and but that was quite an experience in itself because i was the therapist and the secretary the janitor the cashier i was everything and after a while you know when you're doing therapy with a client and the phone is ringing the client says do you answer the damn phone please well you know it's is there something wrong with the picture i talked to the folks at catholic social services about getting extra staff and that was not a possibility because of their budget and so i thought oh boy now i've gotten myself into this big pickle i said again and prayed and then my old supervisor gives me a call one day out of the blue that's why i know that god is there for me he calls me and he says what are you doing for lunch i said nothing and he says well let me take you out to lunch and so he picked me up we went to lunch and then while we were at lunch i started to tell him all of my woes about being in this position and having to be all things and for one position he says how would you like your own position back and i said i'll take it he says wait a minute i haven't even told you how much we're paying as is i will take it i went back to how and how spittle and i didn't know this but he was being promoted to another position so i took his position and became the head of the department and stayed with holland hospital until we develop the community health center and so the community health center was a dream of a group of people who are very concerned for the health care of the uninsured under insured in the how in the area how in hospital was at the head of all this i mean they really truly believe that the needs of the poor were not really being met adequately and so we formed just group in and the opportunity came for us to open the center and i was asked if i wanted to at least get started that i could come back to my job that's what i thought i was going to do and as once i started with the center and started to see the needs and started to see everything that was out there that was so different when when you're in the hospital you're protected by four walls and when your job in four thirty you leave and that's it at the health center you're not protected not really because everybody comes with different stories i'm being evicted i don't have enough food i'm being abused besides being sick and so that kind of of the environment really really appealed to me so when the hospital said you want to come back to your job and i said no and then of course the federal government was then pressuring us to because we were a federally qualified community health center look alike we could not be owned by a hospital and the administrative staff are rather the executive staff could not be an employee of the hospital so i had to make a choice and i really did pray about this and i found a lot of peace in my choice and i chose to stay with the center i lost all the benefits that i had with holland hospital hospital offered great benefits to their employees education tuition reimbursement all of those nice things but that didn't make up for what the benefit that i was going to get at the center and that is helping people and helping to recruit hispanic doctors to the city of holland i mean we didn't even have one hispanic doctor and how and when the center opened we had one and so i remain with the center and the center grew and grew and first year we only saw two thousand patients when i retired december twenty fourth one thousand or two thousand and three we had about ten thousand patients that is a success in itself and watching the center girl was such a neat experience because you know what you're doing for the community you know that it leaves an impact and every time now when i am right by the center i look at it and i go that's my baby and it's my baby but it belongs to somebody else and that's ok but i had some work in getting it started and to me that that's an accomplishment that i will always be proud of  as far as how in this concern i look at how and i look back to my beginnings in holland michigan and the town that i hated so much i have grown to love so much and the reason that i have grown to love holland michigan is not because i was made to but because i grew here i learned things there are things from the dutch there are values from the dutch that i incorporated into my own life the work ethic the roads the religious right i use education all of that has helped for me as a person and for that i'm very grateful to holland michigan and the people that live here yes i had some bad experiences and no one is going to deny that but i can't allow those bad experiences to mar all the other beautiful things that have come about by living in holland i can't do that and i'm very grateful to be a resident of how and i keep telling elle magazine one of these days i want take your job unfortunately i don't live in the city of holland so i can't take his job but i'm going to mentor someone who is young and can do that i would love to see a hispanic in charge or as a mayor of holland i would love to see more hispanics in in city council to have voice i would love to see hispanics on the board of commissioners in ottawa county and yes i would love to see someone from this county who is hispanic to represent us in lansing that takes a lot of mentoring and latin americans united for progress is doing that through their leadership conference that will be held in september they hope to incur igi and motivate young hispanics to get involved in community and obviously you can set your sights on lansing you have to start at the bottom and that's where it goes because if you start out in lansing you're not going to get there you have to work your way up and and always always i think people need to be prepared i can't come into a place and say my name is lou reyes and i'm hispanic and you own me a job it doesn't work that way it is my name is  education and i have something to contribute to your organization then i can be proud of that but if i get a job simply because i'm hispanic i'm not going to enjoy that job and so the same thing with being elected into a position you have to work your way you have to gain the respect of people and show that you can care about a community that it's not just about the hispanic community it is about community about how in michigan making holland michigan a good environment for all people not just for one group and someday i think if i run for office that is going to be my platform i want to make holland michigan or ottawa county a place where all people can live and work together and know we don't all have to agree and we don't all have to love and embrace each other but we certainly can work together for a better community what do i want to leave to young people hispanics in particular i think the reason that i am so grateful this biography has been done is because i can tell a story and that i hope through this story people will be encouraged to move out of their little box and they are to be different dare to take a challenge and be part of the community when i started my book i said what do i want to say i'm going right back to where i started what do i want to say to this community what do i want to say to young hispanics and if i am talking to young hispanics today i am saying always always believe in your dream