If you have ever seen the motorcycle hanging in the Engineering Technology Center lobby on the Marietta campus, a 1982 Kawasaki KZ750, you might not know that it was donated by Kennesaw State mechanical engineering technology graduate Caesar Gonzales and features the same forks, front end and wheels as the first race bike he ever built.
Gonzales, 54, recently graduated from KSU in May and relocated to California in order to work for SpaceX, a company known for revolutionizing space technology, as a test technician. At his job, Gonzales will construct, fabricate and design fixtures for testing rocket components, a field that he has wanted to work in his whole life.
For Gonzales, landing the job is the realization of a dream he has had ever since childhood. Growing up in a basement in Long Island, New York, Gonzales suffered constant physical and mental abuse from his parents. Despite their cruelty, Gonzales constructed model rockets out of scavenged scrap and dreamed of learning about astronomy and space travel.
“Reflecting back to when I interviewed with SpaceX, I remember being in the basement as a child and thinking about how much I want to design rockets and materials to launch satellites and go to the moon and everything,” Gonzales said. “Here I am interviewing at SpaceX all these years later, and I made it.”
Gonzales’ journey to where he is now began when he read a magazine in school about Kenny Roberts, a famous motorcycle racer. In the fifth grade, Gonzales was removed from his home by Child Protective Services, and by age 15 he had started motorcycle repair school.
After moving to Atlanta in 1996, Gonzales worked on race bikes as a mechanic for different shops until 1998 when he finally had the opportunity to acquire his own racing bike, a Kawasaki EX500.
“I had some extra parts, I put it all together, and it morphed together from junk someone had in their backyard into a race bike,” Gonzales said.
Gonzales put the bike together after opening his store, Highside Motorsports, in Lithia Springs, Georgia. When fully assembled, Gonzales took the bike to the Talladega Gran Prix Raceway in Munford, Alabama, to participate in his first WERA Clubman race.
Gonzales raced in more than 100 events during his career and added quite a few wins to his record. When his days of racing were winding down, he decided it was time to return to school. In 2010 he enrolled at Southern Polytechnic State University, now KSU, during the summer semester.
“The stuff I was learning — something as mundane as calculus — was just amazing to me because it was like learning a new language,” Gonzales said. “I could suddenly speak and communicate in derivatives and integrals when a few years back I had no idea what any of this was.”
In addition to his studies, Gonzales applied himself in student life and was asked by one of the founding members of KSU’s Electric Vehicle Team to help create an electric race bike. Gonzales donated a race bike, chassis and other parts, along with financial support. In just two weeks, the team brought a napkin drawing to life and raced the electric bike at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway in the FIM Electric Grand Prix.
“Some of the other students on our team were amazed at the timeline, but more than that, it made them feel invincible — like the possibility of what they could do were endless,” Gonzales said.
Facing a lifetime of adversity, running a business, having a racing career and graduating from college all led Gonzales to write an autobiography titled “Beating the Odds: An Autobiographical Rags to Racing Story.”
Gonzales recalled the writing process as gut-wrenching and hard to continue at times when including all of the honest details from his childhood. Through his writing, however, Gonzales hopes to inspire others to pursue their lifelong dreams while telling his own story and advocating for victims of child abuse.
When receiving criticism that the book was too sad, Gonzales said that, if read correctly, the book “demonstrates that in spite of what you come through, you can achieve whatever you want to achieve — all you have to do is have a dream.”
