The Roanoker - March/April 2020 - 55

LUTZ LOVERN

University of Virginia and the University
of Auckland, New Zealand, among others.
She is also the founder of Manzanw LLC,
which offers small-group Spanish language,
culture and creativity programs in southern
Spain. She moved to Virginia in 1992 and is
married to Steve Wassell, a math professor
at Hollins.
Delgado-Librero has taught in several
countries, and she and her husband even
taught Semester at Sea, a study-abroad
program that takes place on a cruise ship.
At the moment, "I'm not looking for a job.
My currency is time, not money, and I am
doing a bunch of things."
Among those things: teaching three
classes in Spanish at Virginia Tech and
translating for a Chicago company. She has
been a court and medical interpreter.

"The U.S. liberated me mentally.
I want a year in Italy, a year in
France...I'd love to live in each
country learning the language and
the culture."

-CELESTE DELGADO-LIBRERO

TheRoanoker.com

She visited the U.S. as a teenager and
when she moved here, "it was very familiar,"
she says. Nothing shocked her: "It wasn't that
different" from her home in Spain, though
there were certain professional restrictions
there stemming from the social and work
structures of the Spanish system.
"The U.S. liberated me mentally," she
says. She likes the idea of living in different
countries, different cultures. "I want a year
in Italy, a year in France ... I'd love to live
in each country learning the language and
the culture."
She admits that "I never really wanted to
live here. It was never an ambition, but when
you fall in love with someone who lives here"
you make compromises.
Through it all, she says emphatically, "I
am a teacher."

LUTZ LOVERN, who owns and operates Luz
Life, Roanoke's only classic Pilates school,
came to the U.S. with her American husband,
Marvin Lovern, a lawyer. "He asked me to
bring him home to die," she says. He closed
his business in Qatar, and she moved her
Pilates school to the Star City.
They were a globe-trotting couple, living
in Hong Kong, Australia, India, Bangkok

"But today, this is my home. It is safe
with no negatives. I like Roanoke.
My clients are my family. ... I am a
citizen of this planet. My only fear is
that I might stop growing."

-LUTZ LOVERN

and Katmandu and she speaks English,
French, Italian, Chinese and Arabic, so the
move to the U.S. was not as traumatic as it
might have been. Her biggest challenge "was
being without my husband," she says. "We
need love, people to understand our pain"
and working with her students ultimately
provided that.
Lovern was and is "a student of everything,"
she says. She is a reiki master, a yoga teacher, a
licensed nutritionist and a teacher of wellness,
fitness and cycling. She has been a graphic
designer. But she doesn't drive a car, instead
using Uber. At 14, she broke her neck in a
bicycle accident and was paralyzed for a time.
She overcompensated with her comeback.
She studied Pilates on the West Coast,
her teacher a direct student of Joseph Pilates,
she says. "Not everybody teaches real Pilates
and I only teach it one on one," she says.

MARCH/APRIL 2020 55
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