Robert C. Hutchison is an author, educator, and technologist whose work blends meticulous historical research with a deep commitment to preserving family stories shaped by war, displacement, and resilience. His debut narrative nonfiction book, Threads of Hope, grew from decades of uncovering his family’s hidden history—letters saved in boxes, fragments of memory, and the extraordinary journeys of his mother and aunts, three young sisters scattered across continents during the Spanish Civil War.
Hutchison’s mother, Alicia Morales, was one of nearly 4,000 Basque children evacuated on the SS Habana in 1937. Her twin sister was sent with her to England; their older sister was sent alone to the Soviet Union. Their parents—long believed dead—survived Franco’s prisons, North African labor camps, and even the Nazi concentration camp at Mauthausen. Their reunion eight years later in Mexico, and the quiet courage that followed, became the foundation of Hutchison’s lifelong search to understand and honor their story.
Professionally, Hutchison has spent more than four decades at the intersection of technology, education, and global development. He is the author of four technical books, including a McGraw-Hill university textbook and three major publications for AT&T Bell Laboratories. As founder and CEO of Visual Software, he led the creation of large-scale interoperability systems used across the U.S. and internationally. Later, as Executive Director of The eNeighborhood Project, he worked across ten African countries to bring sustainable digital resources to underserved communities—work informed by his family’s own history of displacement and rebuilding.
A gifted teacher, Hutchison has taught more than 10,000 students worldwide, from university faculty to high school learners preparing for careers in cybersecurity and technology to elementary school students. His passion for education, storytelling, and human connection shapes every page of Threads of Hope.
Today, Hutchison lives in Pennsylvania, where he continues to write, teach, and preserve the stories that might otherwise be lost to time. Threads of Hope is both a tribute to the quiet power of kindness and a testament to the generations who carried these memories forward so they would not disappear.
Threads of Hope is his first work of narrative nonfiction—and his most personal. "For most of my childhood," he writes, "I didn't know I was living in the epilogue of an epic story." The book is his attempt to preserve that story before the last people who remembered it were gone, and to pass it on to his children, grandchildren, and anyone who needs to be reminded that ordinary people surviving extraordinary circumstances can create something beautiful.
Speaking & School Visits
Robert is available for school visits, library programs, educator workshops, and speaking engagements. His talks draw on the history behind Threads of Hope—the Spanish Civil War, the Basque evacuations, the experience of refugee children in wartime Britain—as well as his own journey of discovery: piecing together a family history that had been kept silent for decades.
To inquire about a visit or engagement, please use the Contact page.