Everyone can be a mentor to someone.

My dream of being a teacher started in seventh grade, when I had a teacher I idolized. I attended a country one-room school where Miss Morton taught grades one through eight. Consequently, she sometimes needed help with reading for the first and second graders. I was a willing aide and in the process of teaching them an R, I received my own three Rs—Responsibility, Respect and the Right to talk with Miss Morton. I shared with her my impossible dream, and she urged me to try for it.

However, when I was ready to start high school in 1942, my dream crashed on the rocks of reality. My parents, struggling to make a living for nine children on a farm on the arid plains of eastern Colorado, were love-rich and cash-poor. Providing food and clothing for us was top priority, and getting an education was a luxury for people with far more money than we had.

Public high schools are free, but we lived southwest of Limon, Colo., just inside the Elbert County line. Thus, I was supposed to go to high school in Kiowa, 10 miles away. However, there was no way to get there, as our one truck was tied up with necessary farm chores. The bus from Limon schools came within a half mile of our farm, but we would have to pay tuition to go there since we were not in Lincoln County. My parents said, “There’s no money for that nonsense.” After all, as a girl, I’d just get married anyway, and no one needed an education to raise kids. Keenly disappointed, I felt crushed. What was I to do?

For several years, my brothers and sisters and I had attended a small Mennonite church located a half mile from our farm. Our minister, George Holdeman, also taught at our local elementary school. He proposed a possible solution: He would provide the books for me, and I could come to the school and study independently. He would be available during lunch or after school to answer any questions I might have. Under the circumstances, the folks agreed that I could try. After all, I’d still be available for chores and to babysit my younger siblings.

I missed the first two months of school that year picking corn and doing farm chores. Starting in November, I walked the mile and a half to school. With Rev. Holdeman’s encouragement, I studied English, world history, algebra, typing, shorthand and science, giving me six of the credits required at that time for graduation.

To continue high school the next year, Rev. Holdeman encouraged me to attend Hesston (Kan.) College and Academy. To go there would take even more money. And I’d no longer be available to help on the farm. I pleaded with them to allow me to go, since I so much wanted an education so I could be a doctor. “We can’t afford it,” they said. I’m sure my mentor persuaded my parents to let me try, again by offering a means for me to earn some money.

The finances for that year of school came from three sources: My mentor arranged for me to babysit his brother’s children in La Junta, Colo., during the summer. Another source of money was a small donation from the members of the local Mennonite church. The third source of income was a pig. The pigs on our farm lived in foul-smelling pens and ate the slop cast off from our kitchen scraps. In the summertime, they wallowed in mud holes to cool off. But when a sow had a litter of piglets and one of them had a twisted snout and could not nurse, Dad told me that if I would bottle-feed it until it could eat, I could have the money when it was sold. I gladly accepted the foul-smelling piglet and bottle-fed it for weeks. The Walrus in Alice in Wonderland wonders “whether pigs have wings.” I know the $30 I got from my pig “bank” and the help from Rev. Holdeman gave me the wings to continue my education.

Three summers before I left for Hesston College, Rev. Holdeman loaned me what he said was an old tennis racket (I realize now he must have especially purchased it for me) and taught me to play tennis. Tennis has been a keen interest of mine ever since. I played in tournaments in high school and college and continued to play for years until I was put on oxygen because of damage to my lungs from Guillain-Barre Syndrome, which I developed after taking the swine-flu vaccination. Today I can’t play except mentally. I eagerly await the start of each Grand Slam and cheer on my favorite players on TV.

After I finished my first year at Hesston, I had earned five credits and thought I’d need only five more to be a senior the following year. However, the dean of the school called me in and said: “Wilma, we have a problem. None of the six credits that you did in independent study was registered in Elbert County. What do you think we can do?” I had to admit I had no idea. I confessed that I did not know how I could afford one more year of high school, let alone two.

He called a meeting of the faculty. They, too, were my mentors, as they came up with a plan to grant me credits: Since I had passed the next level of courses in English, world history and algebra with all A’s, they offered to grant me credit on that basis. They required that I pass a proficiency test in typing and shorthand, and somehow I managed to pass them. That left only science. The science teacher thought his course would be compromised unless I took every test the other students had taken in the course all year. During commencement week, while everyone else was celebrating, I studied the entire text, took 20 tests and passed. I could be a senior the next year.

During the summer between my junior and senior years, Rev. Holdeman not only taught me to drive his car (on the farm the boys were taught to drive the truck and tractor, but we girls were needed to do housework and other mundane chores), he also loaned me his car to drive the 7.5 miles into Limon to assist him in his radio repair shop. He wisely did not trust me to repair the radios, but I could answer the phone, assist customers in writing up repair orders or order parts from the catalog. I realize now I really didn’t earn the money he paid me, but it was another way he could help without making me feel I was a beggar.

Throughout the years of my high school and college education, I went to the business office to pay my bill and learned that some anonymous donor had made a small payment on it. I knew it had to be Rev. Holdeman. He was unmarried, and I believe he felt the few dollars he could afford were well spent in helping with my education.

I also credit him with teaching me the basis of my Christian ethics. In his sermons at our local church, he emphasized the significant role women have, influencing their families and forming the nucleus of local churches. It is their leadership, he said, that gives society its moral compass.

Another tenet of my personal ethics is integrity. Based on, “Thou shalt not steal,” Rev. Holdeman emphasized a far stricter standard than is usually associated with that teaching. He stressed that if one took even a postage stamp, at that time worth three cents, then one was just as guilty of stealing as if he had stolen several thousand dollars. I assure you I have stolen neither.

Rev. Holdeman had Type 1 diabetes. As a bachelor he was not consistent in his food intake or in his administration of the insulin on which he was dependent. Thus, he frequently had low sugar, during which he was incoherent, acting as if he were drunk. On more than one occasion, he was stopped by the police because of his erratic behavior and was once taken to jail, since he was incapable of explaining his problem. It is difficult for society to understand afflictions when they are not likewise afflicted. Hence, he became a kind of pariah in the community. In time he had to resign the church and move to La Junta, Colo., where he had relatives. Many years later I heard of his untimely death.

I regret that after I graduated from college and married, I lost all contact and never adequately thanked him for the tremendous assistance and encouragement he gave me and how immeasurably he enriched my life. Without him, I would never have had a high school education, let alone college and postgraduate work.

I calculate that over my professional lifetime I have taught or counseled over 20,000 students. After retirement from teaching, I obtained my Colorado license as a therapist and did volunteer counseling at my church. Thus, my mentor’s kindness and generosity kept giving throughout my lifetime and beyond. Mentorship is not a talent and does not require riches. Everyone can be a mentor to someone.

Malcom Gladwell, in his newest book, Outliers, writes, “No one—not rock stars, not professional athletes, not software billionaires and not even geniuses—ever makes it alone.” And certainly not naïve farm girls.

George, this is my belated, heartfelt thanks to you, my mentor.

Wilma Gundy lives in Arvada, Colo.