Selecky credits humble mentors

If your idea of a mentor is a wiser, more experienced person who guides, comforts and molds you, well, maybe so. But sometimes it’s not so clear-cut.

“Mentor,” says Alice “Tish” Emerson, “is a word that’s used very loosely now.”

Maybe that explains why neither Emerson nor Colville physician Ed Gray identified quickly with the mentor role Mary Selecky says they played in her life. Both are eager to talk about Selecky’s innate abilities but shun any credit for her success.

Selecky, now Washington state secretary of Health, was a student at the University of Pennsylvania when she met Emerson, the dean of students, and impressed her as “a wonderful young woman, willing to do anything.”

And “anything” included helping Emerson, a working single parent, take care of her family and also filling in for a university colleague who became ill at a critical time of the year. Selecky, the student, accepted the challenge and did a professional job, Emerson recalls.

“Mary did as much for me as I did for her,” says Emerson, who’s still a friend and stays in touch with Selecky from her Pennsylvania home.

Like Emerson, Gray praises Selecky’s administrative skills and ability to bring others together.

Gray was a leader in the Stevens County and state medical communities in the 1970s when Selecky arrived in northeast Washington. She was adventurous and attracted to the area, but brand new to the field of health care.

Her leadership talents displayed themselves quickly, despite what Gray recalls was a sometimes testy political environment. Soon, she was administrator of the Northeast Tri-Counties Health District and president of the Washington Association of Local Public Health Officials.

As for being her mentor, Gray says merely, “If I did that, I’m happy.” But he says she was as much a resource for him as he was for her.

While neither Emerson nor Gray wants to seize the mentorship mantle, both spotted Selecky’s potential and helped provide her with opportunities to develop it. That may be more valuable than guiding, comforting and molding — if not the same thing.