WHO WANTS TO BE A HERO?

"I am not a hero," Miep Gies was quoted as saying by 'The New York
Times.' "I just did what any decent person would have done."

At the beginning of World War II, Gies, a Christian, was a secretary
in the food chemicals business of Otto Frank, a Jew. To escape the
Nazis, Frank, his family, and four other Jews moved into a secret
apartment above the business. Gies was one of five people aware of
their hideout and took food to them daily.




After the Jews were discovered and taken away to concentration camps
on August 4, 1944, Gies defied Nazi orders to stay out of the no-
longer-secret apartment. There she found strewn across the floor the
handwritten diary pages of Frank's younger daughter, Anne. At great
personal risk, she retrieved and kept them.

After learning that Anne had died in Bergen-Belsen, Gies gave her
diary to Otto Frank, the only member of the family who survived the
camps. Otto arranged for its publication in 1947, and 'The Diary of
Anne Frank' became an extraordinarily poignant and important document
of Nazi oppression.

"What's a hero?" asked flight attendant Uli Derickson in the March
1994 issue of 'People' magazine. "I didn't even think about it."

Working on TWA flight 847 from Athens to Rome, which was hijacked for
seventeen days by Lebanese terrorists in 1985, she persuaded the
hijackers to spare the lives of all but one person on board and
maintained calm throughout the ordeal. Rejecting the "hero" label,
she insisted that she was only doing her job.

Four years ago, when I visited my sister in Livingston, Montana, there
was one incident that I could not forget. It was winter time and the
garage was very slippery. Daniel, my sister Elena's husband, was in
his office some 30 kilometers away. We decided to go to the Walmart
to buy some groceries in the nearby city of Bozeman.

We were going out when Phil, the youngest son, skidded and almost fell
into the ground. Erik, the eldest, saved the day by holding Phil
before the latter fell. Instantly, Phil hugged his brother and told
him, "You are my hero."

Whether you are a man, a woman, or a little kid, you can be a hero.
"A man can be a hero if he is a scientist, or a soldier, or a drug
addict, or a disc jockey, or a crummy mediocre politician," says
American feminist critic Andrea Dworkin. "A man can be a hero because
he suffers and despairs; or because he thinks logically and
analytically; or because he is 'sensitive;' or because he is cruel.
Wealth establishes a man as a hero, and so does poverty. Virtually any
circumstance in a man's life will make him a hero to some group of
people and has a mythic rendering in the culture—in literature, art,
theater, or the daily newspapers."

"I think of a hero as someone who understands the degree of
responsibility that comes with his freedom," says singer Bob Dylan.
"A hero is no braver than an ordinary man, but he is braver five
minutes longer," noted Ralph Waldo Emerson. But definitely, to quote
the words of John Barth, "Everyone is necessarily the hero of his own
life story."

To some young people, heroes are look up as role models. In most
instances, heroes become idols. One of such idol is Orville Wright,
one of Wright brothers who invented the airplane. Throughout his
life, he maintained the role of modest and retiring inventor.
Although, in later years, he received innumerable invitations, he
rarely attended public functions, and steadfastly refused to speak on
such occasions.

To a delegation of Dayton businessmen, the Ohio-born Wright explained:
"Public speaking is not for me. I must remind you in the kingdom of
the birds, the parrot is the best talker – and the worst flier."

This reminds me of the words of Abraham Lincoln, one of the best-loved
American presidents. He admitted, "I am never more embarrassed than
when I have nothing to say." In simpler terms, speaking for personal
recognition is wasteful; speaking to provide a service to others is
honorable. The best advice here is to have something to say and know
what you're saying, or keep quiet.

If you find the response of Orville Wright or Abraham Lincoln very
unlikely, it's because these people worshipped by some ordinary
mortals are still human beings. Albert Einstein was once asked how he
worked. "I grope," was his immediate reply. Funny, isn't it?

Thomas Alva Edison was talking one day with the governor of North
Carolina, and the governor complimented him on his inventive genius.
"I am not a great inventor," Edison replied. The governor queried:
"But you have over a thousand patents to your credit, haven't you?"

"Yes, but about the only invention I can really claim as absolutely
original is the phonograph," Edison explained. "I guess I'm an
awfully good sponge. I absorb ideas from every source I can, and put
them to practical use. Then I improve them until they become of some
value. The ideas which I use are mostly the ideas of other people who
don't develop them themselves."

In order for someone to be a hero, there must be a villain. A boss
can either be a hero or a villain. It depends upon which perspective
you see him. If he develops you to be like him in the future, then he
can be your hero but if he keeps belittling in front of visitors and
subordinates, then the boss can be your villain.

How does a hero differ from a villain? When screenwriter Ben Hecht
arrived in Hollywood for the first time, his fellow screenwriter
Herbert Mankiewicz told this secret: "In a novel, a hero can lay ten
girls and marry a virgin for a finish. In a movie, this is not
allowed. The hero, as well as the heroine, has to be a virgin. The
villain can lay anybody he wants, have as much fun as he wants
cheating and stealing, getting rich and whipping the servants. But you
have to shoot him in the end."

Who wants to be a hero then? "The real hero is always a hero by
mistake; he dreams of being an honest coward like everybody else,"
reminds Umberto Eco.