Mentors hope to help teens find their way
Volunteers give time to Horry students
By Jessica Foster
The Sun News
Horry County's new Early College High School, the first of its kind in the state, sees mentors as critical to students' success. National research shows that youths who are mentored are likely to improve their grades and social relationships and are less likely to use drugs or skip school. Here is a look at four mentors as they begin their journeys with students.
Marty Gluntz
Marty Gluntz used to eat chocolate like it was his job.
Actually, in a way, it was.
Gluntz of Murrells Inlet worked for Hershey's chocolate company for more than 26 years. During his time there, Gluntz was responsible for developing the firm's Special Dark chocolate.
"They always had bowls of it around," he said. "You could take as much of it as you wanted. I ate it every day for over 26 years and still do."
Gluntz, 75, retired in 1996. After living with his wife in China for half a year doing consulting work, he settled at the beach.
For Gluntz, retirement doesn't equal inactivity.
He spends his time playing golf and tennis, and doing other volunteer work, for example, at the Georgetown County Public Library and Brookgreen Gardens.
Because he has more time now than he did when he was vice president of technical services for the international division of Hershey, he wants to share with his mentee his experiences in business and chemistry.
Raising five children and watching five grandchildren grow have given him life experiences that he thinks also might be valuable in his role as a mentor.
The Pennsylvania native said he's still uncertain about a few things, though.
One is how to provide job shadowing and internship experiences as many other mentors will through their jobs.
"I'm not sure exactly how I'm going to do it yet, but there may be some contacts that I have down here that I may be able to use to provide some input to the student," he said.
The second is whether his 14-year-old students, Mallory Alessi and Lacy Fields of Conway High School, will like being paired with someone who is more than five times their age.
"I don't know how the student's going to take to an old guy," Gluntz said.
Mallory and Lacy say his age just means he has more experience.
"He's really cool," Mallory said. "He just has a lot to offer."
Gluntz's own greatest mentor was a chemistry teacher who sent him down the path to getting a Ph.D. in that subject.
Gluntz thinks the first year for the program will be a challenge for all those involved, including the faculty, staff, students and mentors, but he wants to do what he can to help ensure its success and maybe even learn a little himself while he's at it.
"I think it's going to be a learning experience for me as well that will keep me busy and on my toes."
Bob and Aseniah Wallace
Mentors such as Bob and Aseniah Wallace think acts of kindness are like chain reactions.
Bob Wallace, 59, decided to mentor in large part because as a child, he was motivated by several successful black men in the Charlotte, N.C., community where he grew up.
Now he is returning the favor.
"They said, 'The only way that you can repay me is to help someone else,' so that has stuck with me through the years," Wallace said. "The least I could do was turn around and help extend the hand that was extended to me."
As a management consultant, Wallace finds himself in the same position of success that his mentors held.
He established the management consulting firm Wallace Success International in 1991, which works with current and emerging leaders and does team-building, diversity training and executive coaching.
Wallace's student, 14-year-old Jabari Laws of North Myrtle Beach High School, knew that Wallace was a man to be admired after their first meeting.
Jabari looks forward to getting to know Wallace and hopes that Wallace's business savvy will help him reach his goal of owning a real estate business.
"He's a great man," Jabari said.
Wallace works primarily out of his home alongside his wife, Aseniah Wallace, who works for Sun Microsystems as a channels manager.
Aseniah Wallace, 55, is interested in mentoring because she had some
trouble in school after listening to bad advice from a counselor, and
she 
wants
to pass along what she learned from the experience.
Even though she had been making good grades, when she got to high school her guidance counselor said she shouldn't plan on going to college.
"For some reason that kind of took the air out of my sail. I just stopped performing, and my grades dropped," Wallace said.
Wallace said the experience made her stronger in some ways. She ended up being the first in her family to go to college, and she studied biology and chemistry.
As the former president of the National Council of Negro Women for the greater Boston area, Wallace has also been an advocate for women in leadership positions.
She plans to encourage her student, 14-year-old Leslie Grate of Loris High School, to stay on track in school and in life by just listening and showing that she cares.
"If I can just positively touch the life of one child, that would please me to no end," she said.
Leslie, who wants to be a dental hygienist, wants to study with Wallace and make business contacts, and she hopes they can do things like get their nails and hair done together.
She wasn't nervous at all the first time they met, she said.
"I was excited because I knew she was going to be a good person for me," she said. "I knew she was going to help me get through."
Ewa Laurance
As the former world women's nine-ball billiards champion, Ewa Laurance, 42, of Conway, is used to doing trick shot exhibitions, commentating on ESPN, and writing columns and books about the game.
With wins for all the sport's major titles under her belt, she knows what it's like to be successful and to be slathered with recognition.
But now she's taking on a new position, and it doesn't involve crouching over a pool table.
She'll be spending time regularly with Eric Conner, 14, the Carolina Forest High School student she met for the first time last month, and hopes she can in some way make an impact on Eric's life.
The goal is to have mentors spend about an hour a week with their students, according to Marsha Griffin, a project consultant for Business Education Expectations who was in charge of recruiting mentors.
Eric, who wants to study golf course management, said that he was a little nervous about having a mentor at first, but meeting her relieved his apprehension.
"I think she's nice," Eric said.
"I'm more comfortable just because I met her and I know her now," he said.
Laurance and her husband, actor and national broadcaster Mitchell Laurance, plan to share the student because their hectic traveling schedules make it tough to meet with the student every week.
The two are no strangers to the selfless giving that mentoring requires. They frequent golf celebrity charity events around the country. Ewa Laurance did a goodwill tour for American troops overseas in 2003.
Mentoring lets them give back to the community in ways they usually don't get the chance to.
"It's rare that we find opportunities to actually get involved other than donating money," she said. "Here, locally, we love the opportunity of being able to get involved."
Laurance has never participated in a mentoring program before, but she has raised a 21-year-old daughter, who is now a biology student at Coastal Carolina University.
Ewa Laurance is not sure what to expect from mentoring or whether she'll be good at it. But, as with so many other challenges she has faced, she's not letting fear of failure hold her back.
"I could very easily use excuses or the fear of 'What if I'm not good at this?'" Laurance said. "Then you'll never do it."
It was with that mind-set that she moved to the U.S. at age 17 from her hometown of Gavle, Sweden, to pursue an uncertain career path.
After divorcing her first husband, she led the life of a single mother, waitressing and modeling to make ends meet until she got a break in the world of billiards.
That break came when Brunswick Billiards of Lake Forest, Ill., offered her a sponsorship in 1988, which she said changed her life.
Since then, she has become known for promoting the sport by winning titles throughout the world, making public appearances and gracing the covers of magazines such as the New York Times Magazine, People and Sports Illustrated.
Her own childhood mentors - including her parents, teachers and the owner of her hometown pool hall - instilled in her the drive and ambition that made her believe success was possible.
She hopes that she can do the same for someone else.
"Most of the people in mentoring programs have worked hard, have followed their
dreams, have become really productive citizens in the community," she
said. "All of us started somewhere, so just by living as an example,
hopefully you can also be a positive influence on the kids."
Fast facts
A study of nearly 1,000 mentees through Big Brothers Big Sisters, a nonprofit organization that serves 6- to 18-year-old children across the country, found that mentees were:
More confident in their schoolwork performance
Able to get along better with their families
46 percent less likely to begin using illegal drugs
27 percent less likely to begin using alcohol
52 percent less likely to skip school
Source: Big Brothers Big Sisters Web site