THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Monday, November 21, 1994 TAG: 9411210041
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Column
SOURCE: Guy Friddell
LENGTH: Medium: 62 lines
How intriguing to find oneself present at the birth of a word.
It occurred for me at a symposium where most of those present were half my age. In just such company one is most apt to be dumbfounded.
As I was when the moderator mentioned a ``mentee,'' meaning someone under the eye of a mentor.
I asked the woman to my left whether she had heard the word before. No, she said, but she would prefer ``mentoree'' except that mentee had the virtue of being shorter.
Though the widespread use of ``mentor'' is new, the concept of an older person helping along a young one has been around ever since Socrates counseled young scholars.
Another notable mentor was George Washington guiding young Alexander Hamilton during and after the American Revolution.
Mentoring, as a recognized trend, came into usage in the 1970s when young women, pioneering in jobs, needed advice from older heads.
In those frontier times, many of us wondered whether corporate America would accept women. But soon it discovered that women are as smart as male employees, if not smarter.
I remember watching a young woman, whom I'd known from infancy, setting out to work carrying a briefcase. The sight almost moved me to tears. They would have been wasted. In a few years she was in the top tier of the business.
In a survey in 1993 of female executives at Fortune 2000 companies, 74 percent of the respondents said they had a mentor and 87 percent said they now are mentors to junior-level women.
Just now I questioned, across the newsroom, an editorial assistant who said that in Virginia Beach she'd enrolled for mentoring, a semester's after-school course.
Most students found it worthwhile, and many found jobs with the firms that had helped them.
And last week our man in Washington, Dale Eisman, reported that the Navy has women piloting combat planes.
(You know, far from being hide-bound, the military often blazes trails as it did when Harry Truman desegregated the troops in 1948.)
Even earlier in the military, in 1942, I met Sgt. Bull Maypop, who undertook to mentor 380 of us for four years.
Once, when we failed to live up to his spacious expectations, he called us together for an ultimatum.
``THE ARMY HAS PLACED YERS WITH ME,'' he roared, ``AND I AM GOING TO TAKE YERS OVERSEAS AND BRING YERS BACK IF I HAVE TO KILL EVERY LAST ONE OF YERS TO DO IT!''
Now I ask you, if that wasn't mentoring, what was it?
But if I had called Mister Maypop a mentor, he would have put me on a week's KP, pots and pans. ILLUSTRATION: B\W Photos
America's early mentors included George Washington, left, who
advised Alexander Hamilton in revolutionary times.
by CNB