Mentoring a Writer by Christine Skarbek

My parents really didn’t know what to do with me.  Oh, it was fine when I, as a 14-year-old, stepped into the role of documenting our family camping trips with tongue-in-cheek travelogues à la Erma Bombeck.  But it was an entirely different matter when I told them I wanted to be a journalist.  That was no career for a woman from a small Midwestern town in the 70s (trailblazer Erma B. notwithstanding).  None of their other eight children wanted to lead such a vagabond life.  Why should I?

And I wouldn’t have – except it was the feminist era.  But that wasn’t as critical as the men who then took me by the hand and encouraged me.

First, there was my program director-boss, Bruce Snook, who urged me to file an EEOC sex discrimination suit against the radio station owner who wouldn’t allow women on the air.  (They tell me I was one of the first women to take on the broadcast industry.)  Having to move into Chicago to take a clerical job at the Sun-Times/Daily News, I was lucky Rod Berschinski had the desk next to mine.  Head writer for the promotion department, he wrote me the letter of recommendation that got me into the University of Iowa’s J-school.

Over the ensuing decades, Kenneth Starck, head of that J-school, and Dave Dierks, my boss at the University Foundation, always gave me the infusion of backing I needed to keep going even though family matters interfered.

Finally, when I had no alternative but to move to Poland, there was screenwriter-novelist and raconteur supreme Dominik W. Rettinger.  He shepherded me through the Polish headwinds that have destroyed many would-bes.

If I hadn’t had these wonderful professional men in my life, my political memoir would be filed away in the recesses of my mind to die with me.  Let’s cheer for those shoulders we all stand on.  Each of these fellas took a chance on me.  This faith they had and have in me is the fuel that keeps me going.  So, my advice is to mentor anyone who wants to write.