Suburban mentors help students find success

Ric Noreen, a retired Kraft executive from Vernon Hills, always wanted more children.

And in many ways, Jeremy Thomas, the 16-year-old Maywood boy he mentors through LINK Unlimited, is the son he never had.

Noreen, now a business consultant, is a regular fixture at Jeremy's basketball games at Walther Lutheran High School in Maywood. The two also have gone boating on Noreen's express cruiser, to concerts at Ravinia and to Bulls games.

“I've had the daughter experience,” Noreen said. “It's great to get the son experience.”

LINK Unlimited, Chicago's oldest educational and mentoring organization pairs low-income, academically promising black students entering private school, with mentors from corporate America who have similar interests.

It was started by John and Carolyn Parmer, a white couple so inspired by Martin Luther King Jr.'s teachings about justice and equality, that they sponsored and mentored a black boy through four years of education at a private high school in Chicago.

To stay in the scholarship program, students must, among other things, maintain A's and B's in all of their subjects, perform at least 20 hours of community service per school year, study at least three hours a night and send two letters of appreciation to their sponsors at least twice a year.

Suburban connection

There are 350 mentors and 15 of them call the Northwest suburbs home: Streamwood, Wheaton, Vernon Hills, St. Charles, Aurora, Glen Ellyn, Naperville, Mount Prospect and Prospect Heights.

Each mentor makes a four-year commitment to: finance a portion or all of their mentee's high school tuition, motivate them to keep their grades up, build their leadership skills and coach and advise them about life.

Sixty percent of the mentors are white, while the other 40 percent are mostly black, with some Latinos and Asians, LINK President Virgil Jones said. Seventy percent of the students come from female-headed households.

The program, now in its 46th year, has seen stellar results.

In the last 11 years, all of the students who completed LINK's program were accepted into a four-year university, Jones said. Of last year's graduates, 65 percent got into top-tier schools and 35 percent received full scholarships.

“Our goal is to get them into the most competitive schools where they will be able to thrive,” Jones said. “With the support of your parent or parents and with the support of LINK Unlimited, you can achieve your goals.”

Some connections continue long after the student has graduated from high school.

Laura and Jeff Comstock, married sponsors from Streamwood, still keep in touch with a mentee who now is studying to be an emergency room doctor's assistant.

“Unfortunately, we were not able to have children,” Laura Comstock said. “So when the opportunity came up (to join LINK), it was a way to give back and a way to give back to a child, and it's a great experience when they come back.”

Following the mentor

Besides offering academic support, sponsors expose their charges to a host of different activities, with the aim of making them well-rounded adults.

Laura Comstock, a director of training and development for Wintrust Financial Corp., has been in the program for 12 years and has a new mentee named Brandi Lee, a freshman at Holy Trinity High School in Chicago who loves art.

They were matched in September and are still getting to know each other. She and her husband have met for a few dinners with Brandi's parents. Later on, she'll take Brandi on her first visit to the Art Institute of Chicago.

Bill Opal, a DuPage County prosecutor living with his wife, Molly, in Wheaton, has been working with 15-year-old Aaron Porter, a sophomore at Christ the King College Prep in Chicago.

The Opals invited Aaron and his mother, Rachael, both of Chicago, to have dinner with them in Wheaton so they could see what life is like in the suburbs.

As a homework assignment, Bill Opal asked Aaron to fill out a college application so he won't get overwhelmed when it's really time to apply for colleges — and so he understands that the top schools look at more than just transcripts.

Besides the basketball games and boat jaunts, Noreen, the retired businessman from Vernon Hills, has become a father figure for Jeremy.

The two have become very close, and Jeremy has sought his advice on everything — from girls to becoming a man.

“One of the morals was to always be truthful in all situations,” Jeremy said. “He's an incredible person and when he says he's going to do something, he does it. He's a man of his word. I try to pattern myself after things he does.”

‘A call to arms'

It hasn't been all fun and games.

Noreen and Jeremy's mother, Marcy, intervened when his grades were slipping his sophomore year and devised a plan to get him back on track.

“That was a call to arms, for both his mother and I,” Noreen said.

These days, Noreen, who mentors Jeremy with his wife, Sarah, is preparing him for the ACT and SAT and arranging campus visits. The two also are developing lists for the colleges he'll apply to.

The Opals and Aaron are working through their own challenges.

The Opals have been sponsoring Aaron for a year and a half. Aaron gets A's and B's in school, and while they bond over a shared love of food, Bill Opal says it's tough to get Aaron to let his guard down.

As a result, their activities have been limited to eating out, attending LINK events and going on one college campus visit.

Bill Opal would love to take Aaron to the Museum of Science and Industry or the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, but their relationship isn't quite ready for that.

That's one of the reasons the Opals invited Aaron and his mother to dinner at their Wheaton home.

Aaron says his hesitancy is nothing personal with the Opals. He's just not the kind of guy who shares his feelings. He also hopes the visit helps break the ice.

“We're kind of trying to see how things go,” Aaron said, “because I'm not really an open person.”

Returning the favor

The students aren't the only ones who are broadening their horizons.

The Opals left the confines of their home to attend a barbecue at Aaron's house, which is on Chicago's West side.

“We live and have grown up in the burbs of Wheaton where there's not a lot of diversity,” Bill Opal said. “We just had not experienced that type of environment. It was completely different for us, but it was awesome.”

In her 12 years with the program, Laura Comstock has learned a lot as well — not to take her life for granted.

“I think sometimes we forgot that things that we have readily available to us and our experiences and our life, good or bad, are not the same experiences that others have,” Comstock said. “And going to a good school and having a choice of a school, I would say most people probably don't think about it the same way these young African-American kids do.”