A huge helping of heroes.

• Author: Kreyche, Gerald F.
• Position: PARTING THOUGHTS

EVERY SOCIETY MUST HAVE HEROES. These exemplars of humanity belong to the ages, and nations can refresh their pride and patriotism by recalling their deeds and legacies. Heroes serve as role models and psychologically are a projection of our better selves. The need for them especially is great for young countries. In the last half of the 18th century, when the U.S. was aborning, the East gave us heroes to emulate and admire in the persons of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Paul Revere, Patrick Henry, and a host of others who risked their lives in creating and signing the Declaration of Independence. They had little to gain personally in seeking freedom from England and everything to lose, exhibiting self-sacrifice of enormous proportions.

In turn, the West produced its own set of heroes. Meriwether Lewis and William Clark, both Virginians, were among the first to engage in heroics there, in an unprecedented two-and-one-half-year trek through unknown lands and dangers to the Pacific Ocean and back, a distance of more than 7,000 miles.

Mountain man Jim Bridger, explorer John C. Fremont, the self-effacing Kit Carson, and the flamboyant Buffalo Bill are but a sprinkling or well-known men who won the West. Native Americans also have contributed their share of heroes to our country. One need only mention Sitting Bull, Crazy Horse, Red Cloud, and Chief Joseph.

The Congressional Medal of Honor is bestowed on military heroes, more often posthumously than directly. Heroes come from all walks of life and make their mark in various fields. Sgt. Alvin York of World War I fame and Audie Murphy, the most decorated soldier of World War II, came from extremely modest backgrounds. Charles Lindbergh won the world's adulation with his solo flight across the Atlantic Ocean in 1927; Chuck Yeager won his by breaking the sound barrier over the Mohave Desert. Certainly, Martin Luther King was a hero as he faced possible assassination every day of his public life for his role as a Socratic gadfly pricking the country's conscience. It is not stretching the point to designate Caesar Chavez a hero for fighting agricultural big business money and power by organizing a union for farm workers. (The same could not be said for Jimmy Hoffa, a union organizer of a different ilk.) Nelson Mandela and Mahatma Ghandi likewise deserve the appellative.

The need for heroes is such that mythic ones appear in history, olden and modern. In ancient Greece, Hero was a priestess...