Day of Service, Month of Mentoring, Lifetime of Reward

Today we celebrate the birth of Martin Luther King Jr., but not just his birthday, but also what he stood for. The day is rightfully called the Martin Luther King Day of Service and encourages involvement in our communities. Dr. King inspired an ethic of selfless service to others. How appropriate then that the month of his birth is designated as National Mentoring Month, for what is mentoring than giving of yourself to others.

There is nothing so important as helping others to learn and grow, to make good decisions, to not be defeated by mistakes, and to have a foundation of support.

I have been fortunate to have great mentors in my life, some formal and most informal. The informal ones were role models, people I watched and learned from, who inspired me to behave in certain ways, to take action, to get involved.

Growing up in the volatile 1960s and 70s, Dr. King was one of those inspirational role models for me, an informal mentor, from whom I learned tolerance, acceptance, and my place as a servant to my community.  I learned the wrongness of inequality, and how the world can be greatly improved when every individual has the opportunity to contribute and fulfill their destiny.

These built upon the basic foundations begun by my very first mentor, my father.

John Fiore Verrico, who would have celebrated his 86^th birthday last week and I still feel the void left in our lives when we lost him way too young nearly 28 years ago. Dad was one of those guys who could do just about anything, even though he had no formal training or education. He left school at a young age to go to work to help support his mother and siblings after his father was gone. But he made the best of every situation. If he needed a job and didn’t know how to do that particular type of work, he taught himself the skills he needed.  

Dad loved everyone and everyone loved him. There were no boundaries of color, age, gender, religious belief. None of it mattered. He viewed people as individuals and judged them only how they conducted themselves and how they treated others. The only people that he was intolerant of were those who were intolerant of others.

Dad taught us to learn something new every day – a motto I have taken to heart and live my life by.

Throughout my school life, I had some great teachers and coaches at various points and the ones who stand out the most were the ones who encouraged me to try. Taught me equality, team cohesion, and individual value. They inspired me to reach beyond my self-perceived boundaries and not be afraid to fail.

To this day, I still wonder where my career would have gone had it not been for the very first Chief Petty Officer I worked for in the Navy. Paul Puskar, known lovingly to all aboard USS BUTTE as “Chief Push,” was my first formal mentor. He let me try new things, he let me make mistakes, and he enabled me to learn from them. He held me accountable, but never let me actually fail in an irrevocable way. He was not above sitting in the studio with the new kid through the wee hours of the morning recording radio and television shows that we’d air the next day. Some of my fondest memories were putting together "Chief Push's Time Machine" and the "Rock-the-BUTTE Show" with Push. Although he retired only a year after we first met, he stayed in my life and showed up for my Navy retirement 23 years later. Not a dry eye in the place when he read the Retired Chief's Creed.

As I became more senior in the Navy and later in civilian life with a plethora of experiences, I have tried to emulate all those great people and live to share what I have learned – as a formal and informal mentor whenever I can.

One other thing I've learned -- the most selfishly wonderful thing about mentoring, is that I continue my own learning and growing with each experience.

So, for Martin Luther King’s Day of Service, for National Mentoring Month, and for every day, reach out and serve.

Be a mentor.
Be a mentee.
Be open-minded, learn something from every experience, and share what you’ve learned.