Souzana of ACE has told me on several occasions how lucky the students at The Wellington School were to have me as their mentor with the ACE program. Each time she tells me this, I mention to her, that I am truly the lucky one. It was indeed a good day for me when I answered the e-mail asking for mentors and found that a school in Columbus was in need of one. The Wellington School is a private school that has a very high percentage of students going on the college after graduation and as such the students I worked with were very motivated. Their enthusiasm was contagious. After my first visit they bugged my co-op teacher, Susan Bonvallet, with "when is the "COIN MAN" coming back." Eventually I made four visits, the first was to help the students with cleaning techniques, identification, types of Roman coins and showing them my collection. On visit two we checked the coins to see if they had identified them correctly, visited some coin selling websites at VCOINS.COM and talked about catalogues and auctions on eBay. My other two visits dealt with awarding certificates to the winners at Wellington from the ACE essay contests, and presenting Susan with a coin and certificate for her contributing her idea for Designing a Roman Coin (she used this assignment with her students. It was a super assignment *) to the ACE website. Wellington has chosen to do the ACE program again this coming school year and we will be also including the middle school history classes. Looks like another busy year, but a year that will be filled with many happy memories like the one just concluded.

I do hope that many others choose to become a mentor in the ACE program. As the famous Ohio State football coach Woody Hayes would tell all of the groups that he would speak to (and I paraphrase) "it is extremely important that each of you pay forward in your dealings with others. You need to help, volunteer and share your interests and passions." I only met Woody one time but that was enough to make me believe in his credo. Good luck with your future school and their students.

Bill Decker
Columbus, Ohio