Mentors are very important people

Dear Editor,

“A hundred years from now it will not matter what my bank account was, the sort of house I lived in, or the kind of car I drove. But the world may be different, because I was important in the life of a boy [girl]” (Forest E Witcraft).

After reading Ian McDonald’s piece on mentors in Sunday Stabroek of December 7, I was moved to write this letter. I believe that in order to live a happy and moral life, one needs positive role models and good mentors to lead them in the right direction.

I was fortunate to have a good mentor, Patricia (Pat) Williams. She was educated, wealthy, white, and a widow. On the other hand, I was uneducated (having dropped out of high school), poor, black, and someone whose life was going nowhere.

We met when I was working a dead-end job parking cars. Twenty-five years ago she asked me a question, which began our mentor-mentee relationship. She asked me what I wanted to be doing in five years; did I want to be parking cars? I didn’t know what I wanted to be doing a year later. I had never looked that far into the future.

From that day, Pat became my mentor until she died. She was a tough and no nonsense person. It was her way or the highway. The first and most important lesson that she taught me was that in this world, you can’t go far without an education. And she encouraged me to go back to school.

After I completed high school and a bachelor’s degree, I was proud of myself, and she was proud of me. But she wasn’t finished. She demanded that I go for a master’s degree, which made me think that she was crazy. I told her that I came from a violent village. To use poet Martin Carter’s language, “I come from rhe Nigger Yard.” But she didn’t care where I came from.

To complicate matters further, she forbade me from getting married until I finished my education. She told me that if I got married before I finished school, I may not finish, because the demands of a family would make it difficult to finish. I remember arguing with her and thinking that she was too demanding, and that she had lost her mind. But at the end of the argument, I obeyed.

It wasn’t until after I completed my master’s, I realised that she was right. The rigorous academic demands required all of my time and effort, and having a family would have made it difficult for me to graduate.

One of the greatest lessons that I learned as a mentee is to trust your mentor even when you don’t agree and even if you can’t see what they’re telling you is good for you.

“I am not a very important man, as importance is commonly rated. I do not have great wealth, control a big business, or occupy a position of great honor or authority,” wrote Forest E Witcraft;

“Yet I may someday mould destiny. For it is within my power to become the most important man in the world in the life of a boy.”

He continued, “All about me are boys [and girls]. They are the makers of history, the builders of tomorrow. If I can have some part in guiding them up the trails of Scouting, on to the high road of noble character and constructive citizenship, I may prove to be the most important man in their lives, the most important man in my community.”

Yours faithfully,

Anthony Pantlitz