He is the center of attention. All eyes look up to the stage in the Grosse Pointe North auditorium. The audience perk their ears, ready to hear what he’s about to say. FHS junior Marcus Bowers takes a deep breath and begins to recite his speech for the audience of GPNspire.

   GPNspire is an opportunity for high school students in Macomb County to share their ideas and stories about inspiration. Bowers was chosen to represent Fraser in this event on November 15, 2013. With help from English teacher Christopher Stanley and Athletic Director Brad Robinson, Bowers wrote and prepared his personal speech about being the “it” in someone’s life.

   “There’s no dictionary term for ‘it.’ It’s something that you get over time by acquiring qualities like being honest, being devoted to what you do, staying on the right track,” Bowers said,   “It’s a process. It’s not something that just happens; it’s something that you have to acquire the qualities for, work for. For example, you have to be the same person around everybody; you can’t be mean to one group and be nice to another. You have to be nice to everybody.”

   Bowers’s presentation was inspired by family and close influences in his life. He used an example from his life growing up through elementary and middle school. In elementary school, Bowers had few friends because he was oversized. However, once he entered junior high, other students began to befriend him because they learned of his football talent.

 “That’s how I want to be in someone else’s life. [Imagine] you have a thousand piece puzzle, and you dump all the pieces on your kitchen table. You can look at it and say, ‘Man this puzzle is just too much work,’ or you can sit there and say, ‘What’s the first step?’ You have to flip the pieces over right side up, see what it is. You have to start with something and start adding, find what you need and put it in place. It’s a process. Just like a puzzle, you stop in life and fail sometimes, but what you have to do is come back to it. Get back on the right track and keep adding, because that’s just how life is. You never fully succeed in something the first time. If you do, you got lucky because it’s not easy to do. It’s the process you have to go through. Once you finally get that puzzle done, you have a beautiful thing in front of you. Once you put in that time, once you worked for what you wanted, those qualities that people wished they could have, you have something special. Go out and share that with other people because they’ll see it. There are certain qualities in people that you just recognize. I want to be more like that person, that’s what you will be in peoples’ lives.”

   Bowers used the strong influence of his grandfather as a foundation to his presentation.

   “[My speech] pulled from personal stuff in my life like my grandfather because he was the ‘it’ in my life. He kind of showed me what to do and the path to stay on through experiences. It helped me out a lot so I wanted to share it with other people. Not everybody has that,” Bowers said.  “Some people don’t have parents there for them, or if they do sometimes their parents aren’t the best examples for them. If you can do it, then take the time and be that person who is a little uncommon, a little different, but you do things right and people admire you for it. I feel like that should be everyone’s goal.”

  Bowers’s grandfather passed away while he was in junior high. His grandfather died a pastor, but he spent a portion of his life traveling on the wrong path, consumed with alcoholism and an addiction of tobacco.

   “When he was younger, he wasn’t very religious; he was a partier from what I was told by my mom. He went out and he just did dumb stuff like every teenager does, but he came back from it when he met my grandmother…and he stopped drinking for her. He went to rehab. He got through that, and that was his start to making his puzzle,” Bowers explained.

    Bowers’s grandmother had a family that had close ties with the church. To win over the girl he wanted, grandpa Bowers had to take another great step.

   “She told him that if he didn’t start going to church, she couldn’t be with him. He knew what he wanted, so he took the next step and started going to church. I guess he found that church was where he wanted to be because he became a pastor and became really religious,” Bowers said. “He was that kind of person who literally would take the shirt off his back to give to you if you needed. He was that kind of person. He totally flipped the script.”

   The transformed grandfather passed away due to kidney failure, a result of his drinking in the past. However, Bowers admires his grandfather’s perseverance and strength for switching his life around.

   “You’re going to fail but you have to come back from it because even the people who, in the end, you thought were the greatest, had mess- ups too, but it’s how you come back from it. He could have kept drinking, kept smoking, and gotten into worse things; instead of that he tried to better himself and be the ‘it’ in someone’s life. That’s what he was in mine. I didn’t have my dad around, so he was pretty much that for me. He was my best friend,” Bowers said.

   According to Bowers, it is much easier to speak about a subject that one is well acquainted with. For him, it wasn’t difficult to give a presentation based on his grandfather. Bowers said he simply spoke from his heart.

   “I was blown away, I thought it was great. He was the last person to go, and I’ll tell you, for going to a school and audience where most people don’t know him at all, he received such high applause. It was really cool to see. He carried the confidence that people see him doing in the hallways, in the classroom, and on the field. People listen when Marcus talks, and that’s what leadership is about, too, to have followers in order to truly be a leader,” Stanley said.

   Bowers is part of multiple sports teams in FHS. Along with Student Council, he is part of the varsity football team, wrestling team, and throws for track and field. Being an active part of Fraser, Bowers is given endless opportunities to be the “it” is someone’s life.

   “I would describe him as someone who doesn’t necessarily always need or want the spotlight, which I think is a really important thing. I think even people much older than him, we can all learn from that, too. He certainly has a way about him where when you have a discussion with him, you can tell that he’s listening to you rather than just waiting for the next thing to say. As much as I know about Marcus, that’s sort of what I’ve learned from him just working with him,” Stanley said.

   Everyone has the ability to be an inspiring person in someone’s life, and the opportunities are endless. One only needs to learn to take advantage of those opportunities.

   “I’m different compared to other people, that’s just how it is. If you were normal, the world would be boring, you just have to accept people for who they are,” Bowers said.

Check out Marcus Bowers’s presentation by visiting http://youtu.be/cRYbw4eMGEo, or hear it on iTunes under “GPNspire talks 2013,” track one.