In the Azores, in the 1960s, if you were born to a farming family, your education ended at fourth grade.
Unless someone made a sacrifice.
Bert Lourenço's aunt sold her land to the Church so her nephew could attend seminary—the only path to continued education for a poor farmer's son. At ten years old, Bert boarded a boat from Terceira to São Miguel, crossing rough Atlantic waters with other children, many of them sick from the journey, all of them leaving everything they knew.
He spent eight years in that seminary. He never intended to become a priest.
This is the story of a man who turned that education into a life—who arrived in America in 1978 with nothing, worked as a janitor while studying at Harvard Extension, earned degrees from Stonehill and Bridgewater State, completed an MBA at UMass Boston, and rose to direct Human Resources at MassHealth.
A man who gave his kidney to save his brother's life. A man who never stopped reading, questioning, seeking. A man who loved his family fiercely, played Pink Floyd at full volume, and walked the Charles River with his closest friends.
He died at forty-seven, leaving behind his wife Maria, three children, and everyone who knew him wondering what more he might have become.
This site exists so that his grandchildren—and their children—will know who he was.