Heroes

They come in many sizes

I was born prematurely on Thanksgiving Day, five weeks ahead of schedule. My father’s Thanksgiving Day dinner that year was a chocolate malt in the hospital snack shop. It was a story that I heard every year on my birthday. I weighed four pounds at birth. And I never caught up.

My grade school had three classes per grade, thirty kids per class, and every year I was the smallest in the entire grade. How did I know that? Because every year I was reminded of that on picture day. Picture day was a rite of passage. It was a way to track the progress of growing up. To compare goofy smiles, slicked down hair, and the sweaters of the era. For reasons that are still a mystery to me our pictures were taken in an order based on height, short to tall. Alphabetical would be more logical but some genius in the world of education thought otherwise. So, every year, I would march to the front of the picture line without being asked. It was a way to track my stunted growth. Eventually, in middle school, I would surpass Penny P. She was built like a wine barrel, but it was still a major victory.

My music career peaked with a solo performance as one of the three kings in our grade school Christmas play.

Myrrh is mine, its bitter perfume. Breathes a life of gathering gloom. Sorrowing, sighing, bleeding, dying. Sealed in his stone, cold, tomb.……

It was the perfect verse for a melancholic kid. But I wasn’t chosen for my beautiful soprano voice. No, I was the third king because the other two kings were almost as short as I was. The music teacher said that we would look better on stage if our heights were more uniform. It may have been the only time in my life when I was picked for something because I was short. But it was a hollow victory. I was simply filler material.

I tried out for the grade school basketball team. I couldn’t dribble or shoot worth a darn but few of us could at that age. Two of us, both equally bad, vied for the last spot on the team. But Larry was tall, I was short. The coach made that clear. I would have loved to have worn the Red Raiders uniform.

Despite my small stature, I always wanted to be a hero. Growing up my favorite TV shows were westerns, like Cheyenne, where the hero kills the bad guys and saves the common town folk from certain ruin. And, in the end, winning the affections of the rancher’s daughter was pretty cool as well. Don’t hang on my gun arm, honey.

I loved Combat!, based on World War 2, where the hero, usually Sargent Saunders, routinely charged a machine gun nest and then humbly accepted the accolades of his comrades. Apparently, there was no girl around to be saved. And then, one dark day, I was told that I had to go to sex education classes. I had to give up my favorite show to attend classes with my father who didn’t want to go any more than I did. We both sat through class and said little during the drive home. He was uncomfortable. I was shell shocked. But I went. A boy, after all, has to have his priorities straight.

But the shows that I really loved were shows where I could actually see myself being the hero. The doctor shows. Ben Casey, Dr. Kildare. Medical Center. How cool it was to see the surgeon come out of the operating room, his scrubs drenched in sweat, to tell the family that he had saved their loved one. Or not. You don’t have to be big and strong to be that kind of hero.

What does it mean to be a hero? Josh Hawley, in his book Manhood: The Masculine Virtues America Needs, puts it this way: “Courage is present only when it costs a man something, when a man confronts the possibility of loss or even death. And the most praiseworthy kind of bravery is bravery for the sake of the good. Any idiot can get himself hurt. That is not courage. That is stupidity. Courage risks pain and worse in order to do what is right.” Boys are risk takers, especially if there is a girl watching. But the stupid things that boys do can become heroic things in manhood, if the risk taking is channeled correctly.

Because risks come in many forms, heroes come in many forms. Football is at its core a multibillion-dollar entertainment industry. But it is much more that entertainment. To many, football players are heroes. They are heroes because they sacrifice their time and risk their bodies for a greater good, the good of the team.

Utility linemen may not be entertaining but they have one of the most dangerous jobs, only slightly less dangerous than loggers and farmers. The death rate for linemen is 42 per 100,000 workers. Working outside in rain, ice, and lightning storms, lineman take risks for a greater good. They keep the lights on. They keep industry humming. They put their boots on every day and go to work to provide for their families. They are heroes.

Physicians give up a lot. Typically, 11-15 years of education after high school and a quarter of a million dollars in tuition. Not to mention the deferred income until well into their 30’s. These are sacrifices made for a greater good. Physicians come in all sizes, shapes, genders, and races. Some are athletes, some are nerds. Most are somewhere in between. And yet, they are heroes.

My father was drafted into the Army Air Corps in 1942. He desperately wanted to fly, to do his part in defeating the evil of Nazi Germany. But, after trying to pass the vision exam and failing it twice, he was relegated to clerical work for the four years that he served in the army. He hated it. He hated it because he never felt heroic. Years after the war I could hear the pain in his voice when he talked about his friend, Ray, who was shot down over France and barely survived several years as a prisoner of war. Ray was a hero. Dad was a clerk. But Dad never understood that out of the 16 million who served, fewer than one million actually saw combat. The rest, the 94%, were doing the jobs that were needed to support the war effort. Dad showed up and did his job to the best of his ability. Sometimes being a hero means giving up something. He gave up four years of his life doing something that he hated for a greater good. He was a hero.

We need heroes, someone to stand between the good that we have and the evil that wants to destroy it. Heroes are in all walks of life standing for what is right, risking careers, friendships, and even physical harm. Doing the right thing can be costly.

As I grew up my idea of what makes a hero also grew up. I mean, after all, most modern men are not gun slinging cowboys. So, I was searching. One evening, sitting at the dinner table, I asked my father: “Dad, what does it take to be a man? What does it take to be a hero?” My brother’s mashed potatoes came out of his nose. After the guffawing died down my father answered in his usual quiet, kind way: “A man is someone who is willing to accept responsibility, provide for his family, and stand up for what is right. That’s a hero”.

That was good enough for me. And then my hero smiled at me.