By Gordon Kearns
John Wayne. Now there was a hero bigger than life.
Oh, man! As Indian fighter, western marshal, retired boxer, fighter pilot, admiral or cattle drover, when that giant swaggered onto the screen, he was the incarnation of iron-jawed courage. His heroics are forever etched in he hearts of millions.
By contrast, Audie Murphy was the picture of the non-hero: little, skinny, and baby-faced. Like The Duke, Audie starred in a whole flock of movies, mostly westerns, but his were mostly easily forgotten.
In real life, however, little Audie Murphy was possibly the most intrepid hero of World War II, winning every medal the United States had to offer, including the Congressional Medal of Honor. Today, except for a few old vets and his proud state of Texas, the name of Audie Murphy is all but forgotten.
In the world of sports, baseball fans everywhere know about George Herman Ruth, superhero of generations. So beloved was "The Babe" that when Roger Maris broke his single-season home run record and Hank Aaron his lifetime total, both were vilified. Folks felt their hero had to be protected from modern pretenders - just as some folks who idolize Elvis Presley want to protect him from having died.
We like our heroes bigger than life. They have to be cool, self-confident and audacious; and their deeds spectacular, thrilling and glamorous.
However, in real life most heroic situations are too mortal to be thrilling, spectacular or glamorous. Take Joan of Arc. The climax to her heroic life came after her capture and trial, when she courageously rejected an earlier-coerced confession and defiantly dressed in her typical man's garb. She understood the action would assure her execution. History has recorded that when she was tied to the stake, there was more terror than audacity in the nineteen-year-old girl's heart.
Last Nov. 20, as a fire burned aboard the coal-transport ship Polydoros, radioman Hipolito Elanga stayed at his post in the radio room, sending out distress calls. The Coast Guard rescued the 29 other crew members, but Hipolito was found dead at his post overcome by smoke from the fire. It wasn't a spectacular, thrilling or glamorous scene in the radio room where the unheralded radioman bravely died.
Nor was the death scene of another hero, Colette Webster, an American volunteer helping in a front line hospital in Mostar, Bosnia-Herzegovina. Colette was killed by shrapnel from a rocket grenade that exploded near where she was standing with a group of friends. She was the only one hit.
Recently, Dr. Bob Arnot, CBS News medical correspondent, contracted cholera while saving the life of a child with the disease in a Rwandan refugee camp. There's nothing thrilling or glamorous about cholera.
There's an element in the acts of everyday real-life heroism that's missing from the heroics in the fields of entertainment, no matter how thrilling, spectacular or glamorous. I believe that element is nobility, the nobility of the lonely decision by a fragile human to take the responsibility for doing what has to be done for the welfare or dignity of another being or in defense of a heartfelt principle.
It could be that real heroism is no more than the noble, artless act of 11-year-old Kathy Hoten, a sixth-grade student I knew a long time ago. All through the school day, snow poured down in blizzard proportions. Buses somehow did arrive at the school door to take the children home; but the continued snow made progress snail-pace slow. Hours later, Kathy and four primary grade children were deposited at their stop. Through deep drifts and past the dark shapes of skidding cars, Kathy huddled the younger children together, and against the fierce storm took all of them to their own doorsteps before turning home herself. The ominous shadow of tragedy trailed a step behind.
And perhaps John Wayne's greatest nobility wasn't achieved in any of his scripted sagas; perhaps it came in his last months of life, as he endured with steadfast spirit the private, painful ravages of cancer, a steadfastness he shared with millions of other equally noble humans throughout history.
Heroes are ... as big as life.
Click Here for more about these heroes
Two Classic Fictional Heroes: Kivrin and Joanna
<or go to
An Explanation; Being Things; Childhood; Heroes; The Inner Spirit;
Elves I Have Known
Other Essays at Large: Movie Classics; Class of the Millennium;
My Book Reviews; My Stories
From Dorothy's Corner: For Dorothy
Comments: GKEARNS@prodigy.net