For me it is Jane Goodall, who has been my hero for 55 yrs, and still is, for doing what she has been doing for 55yrs protecting our closest relatives in the animal kingdom.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/12/business/jane-goodall-corner-office.html

She took care of her deaf parents. She was the oldest child and she learned to sign before she learned to speak. She would sign to her younger siblings to tell them what their parents said. She translated for them all the rest of their lives and she took care of them.

She had 6 children with one who was disabled. This was extremely difficult for her. Then a second son had a brain bleed at age 42 and she had another adult child to care for. They are both doing really well since she passed away due to all her care.

My greatest hero is the prophet, seer, and revelator chosen by God himself to be His mouthpiece and representative on earth, even President Russel M. Nelson. /s

My hero is my brother, who stepped up to the plate after my father died when I was 14 years old. My mother was unable to care for me, so my brother took me with him when he went off to graduate school. He got an inexpensive apartment on the furthest fringes of a town with an excellent high school. He has always been about his family, and along with my dad, I cannot imagine a better man. My sister-in-law has been awesome as well. Can you imagine taking on an angsty teenager when you, yourself are in your 20s? She did. They both did.

There are people who perhaps made a bigger impact on society at large, but these people made a difference to me. They rescued me. They made my life immeasurably better. I would not be what I am today without them. I love them.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/16/2019 06:44PM by summer.

A note of applause for summer and cl2's comments. There are heroes great and small, and both are heroic.

Jaime Retief, of the Corps Diplomatique Terrestrienne (CDT)

Overall, I should say Siddhartha Gautama

but being of Norwegian descent I 'must' also add Edvard Grieg, Thor Heyerdahl, & Leif Erikson.

He commanded the team that parachuted into Norway, skied across a frozen plateau, reconned the Nazi heavy water plant needed for their atomic bomb, and destroyed it. An incredible multi-talented commander. Ian Flemming said Ronnebert was the real-world model for James Bond.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/22/obituaries/joachim-ronneberg-dead.html

thanks, Caffiend, I haven't heard that name before. my dad was born in Molde, Norway, was a Sgt. in U.S. army who trained soldiers to repatriate Norway...


I should have also mentioned Ken Burns, not sure what % Norwegian he is however...

Also on that level, Niels Bohr, who on that fateful day in Copenhagen steered Heisenberg in the wrong direction, slowing the development of the Nazi bomb by several months and ensuring the Americans got there first.

Several books have been written on it. This will get you started:

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/news/2016/06/winter-fortress-neal-bascomb-heroes-of-telemark-nazi-atomic-bomb-heavy-water/

"The Heroes of Telemark" is a serviceable film with Kirk Douglas. Obviously, it tilts towards the dramatic and entertainment side, but it gets the general story of the raid right.

Historical research has shown that the Nazis were nowhere close to making an A-bomb, but Allied intelligence did not know that. Destroying the Telemark plant was the prudent thing to do.

LW: Bohr? Copenhagen? Heisenberg? This is new to me. Perhaps you can provide a capsule summary?

I toured the museum where this raid took place when I was in Norway. I can't imagine what it took to scale that cliff in the dead of winter.

This same team blew up a ship with barrels of heavy water in a Fjord near the plant. The Norwegian underground was very effective at slowing the Germans.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/17/2019 12:36PM by sbg.

Caffiend,

In the autumn of 1941 Heisenberg visited Bohr in occupied Denmark. There are competing, and self-serving, accounts of what happened. What is agreed upon, though, is that the two erstwhile friends went on a walk around a lake and that midway through the excursion Bohr abruptly stopped the conversation and left. The two men continued to send occasional letters, etc., but the friendship never regained its previous intimacy.

Heisenberg's account seems less credible because he offers no explanation for the falling out. Bohr's account, in my opinion, makes more sense. According to him, Heisenberg was working on a German bomb (true) and had run into a problem (true); he wanted to get Bohr's guidance on how to move forward. As an anti-Nazi and pacifistic Jew, Bohr had no interest in helping his old friend overcome the obstacle in his path.

And it was a simple obstacle: Heisenberg had committed an elementary mathematical error that made the easiest way to build a nuclear weapon seem nearly impossible and thereby diverted the German effort into less promising byways. Bohr worried that if he said anything, even asking a question about Heisenberg's research, he might stimulate the German to review his math, see and correct his error, and accelerate the development of the bomb. So Bohr ended the discussion and left, and the offended Heisenberg returned to Germany none the wiser. The result was to delay the German program by several months, which prevented the Germans form developing the bomb in the winter or spring of 1945.

The story I tell is not certain but I find it more plausible than the alternatives. In the short term the outcome was advantageous to the West, assuredly, although Oppenheimer's horrified allusion to the Bhagavad Gita rightly identified future problems.

Another Norwegian, Amundsen, was no slouch either.

caffiend Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> He commanded the team that parachuted into Norway,
> skied across a frozen plateau, reconned the Nazi
> heavy water plant needed for their atomic bomb,
> and destroyed it. An incredible multi-talented
> commander. Ian Flemming said Ronnebert was the
> real-world model for James Bond.
>
> https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/22/obituaries/joac
> him-ronneberg-dead.html

He said the same about a lot of people. Fitzroy Maclean and some Serbian guy are among the other models.

Have to admit Heroes of Telemark were tough bast*rds though.

On the temporal plane, my brother-in-law.

His wife came down with OCD, which has gotten worse over the years. Predictably, she denies any problem--"If only other people would..."

Then they got a late-in-life baby girl!

Even as an independent businessman (maintains a music studio), he is the primary caregiver to a limited-capacity wife and a bright, growing 6-year-old, plus being the homemaker. What a guy.

That is heroic.

My stories are generally like these. There are national and international leaders whom I consider heroic, but those are the obvious and easy answers.

The personal things matter are in some ways more meaningful. In that sense I am surrounded by heroes.

I have a friend on Wall Street who works for filthy lucre for a couple of years, then takes off and does something with social utility like creating a bank in an underserved inner city so people can get loans, then returns to his bank for two years, then repeats the process. He has a sister who is troubled, and he quietly adopted one of her children. He's a hero for playing that role for his family and giving up immense amounts of money to do things with social utility.

There's the guy who runs my local gym. He was an NFL coach for several years but decided he wasn't making a difference in the world, so he quit and opened up a gym/community center that combines world-class coaches and teachers with a very low-budget operational model. The place is run by kids on a work exchange system, so money is no object to anyone and, as a result, the dusting is never done perfectly. Some of the alums are people you, a Pats fan, would recognize. Others are just kids who were in really bad places but found a home where they could study art or learn to sprint while also garnering working skills and growing into college or careers.

There's a 35 year old man at that gym who is a serious athlete and intimidating as can be, nothing but tats and skull cap. We met when we were warming up a couple of years ago and started commiserating about how difficult it is to raise children with all of the contemporary challenges. He (and his mother and grandmother) are heroes to me because when he was 15 and got his girlfriend pregnant, they decided he'd acted like a man and must now be one. So with their support he reared his child while going to college and starting a career. Now his son works at our gym and all of us work out there, and he is married and just had a second son.

There are many here as elsewhere; people who quietly help others, bear the burdens of a screwed up society, assist families in difficulty or nurture kids who are lost. I am often astounded by the moral quality and generosity of the people around my family and in our community.

It gives me hope.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/17/2019 01:44AM by Lot's Wife.

My wife. She held the fort down when I came down really sick and both my parents died. She’s a strong woman but has a wonderful caring side to her.

I have a couple because I couldn’t decide between them
My husband for being a hard worker and good example to our family and his extended family and for having the tenacity of a bulldog to earn a college degree,all in a second language; studying is hard enough in the language you grew up with.
My dad, for his patience and kindness. He never left my mom’s side when she was sick with cancer and he did some compassionate things when he was in the navy in World War 2.
My children: I admire each one of them and there is no one I would rather spend time with than them, and my husband.
The brave group of men in Operation Valkyrie and their families.
I chose my name because of these brave people in Operation Valkyrie.

it's great to have a personal acquaintance as a hero, I don't.
a great guy in my life was the Mennonite pastor in Toledo who gave me a second chance when I said something incredibly stupid, thanks Pastor Mark.

I have two. First, my father, who stayed faithful to his marriage vows for 65 years, despite being married to a very difficult, aggressive, vindictive woman, and then nursed her, fed her and cleaned her for her last 5 years as she disappeared into Alzheimer's.

The other was my mother-in-law. From a French working-class background, at age 19 she joined the French resistance against the Nazis. She was arrested a first time by the French Vichy police while working as a teacher, released after about a year, made her way to Paris where she was picked up by the Gestapo and interrogated for more than a week (without giving anything away). She was then hoovered up from a French prison by the Nazis and deported to Ravensbrück concentration camp at age 21, after her fiancé had been executed by a German firing squad, also for resistance. She finally escaped during the "death march" from Ravensbrück, when the Nazis led vast columns of deportees across the German countryside toward an uncertain fate to attempt to hide their crimes. Throughout this, she remained cheerful and determined, even taking time to run literacy classes for the younger deportees in her time off from being forced to work for the German war effort. Subsequently, when not working (in education), she spent the rest of her life going into French schools to bear witness of what she had seen and experienced. And she was also great fun! A wonderful woman who I am proud to have had as my children's grandmother. Thanks Hélène.

Tom in Paris

Those are two wonderful stories Tom. You should be very proud of both.

I agree with the poster whose name I cannot persuade my computer to produce. No surprise on the substance, though, since a man like you must be surrounded by great people, Tom in Paris.

That's very kind, Lot's Wife, but I assure you that I am just as frequently accompanied by idiots and, on a bad day, more than capable of emulating them ;-)

Me, myself, and I.
I'm sure that sounds conceited, but its the truth.

I rescued myself several times during my life. Nobody did it for me, or lifted a finger.

When I got divorced in my mid 30's with toddler aged kids, I was the one that rescued myself and my kids. I did all of the work. Nobody else stepped in and rescued us from anything.

My TBM family only shows up when they think there may be some financial benefit to them. Other than that, dead silence.

I'm my own hero, and damn proud of it. I don't owe anyone anything.

I recently attended a graduation at (USMC Base) Quantico, Virginia. The platoons of freshly minted female 2nd lieutenants looked right sharp.

Dang, Mia. I think I found a new hero.

Mia, Myselfa, and Ia?

Whistleblowers are my heroes.

I can’t name them, but you know who they are.

They make a great personal sacrifice based on high principles and an abiding trust that their fellow citizens will correct that which they blow the whistle to reveal.

Many think them naïve. I think them heroes.

My father. Kindest most honest and generous man I have ever known. Showed me by his example how to be a good husband and father.

A good friend of mine from church who just passed away on Monday.
She was one of the first to challenge me to begin the process of becoming an independent, self sufficient woman. One of the things I remember her telling me was "If not you, then who", meaning I need to learn to do things myself and not expect others to do them for me. Learning of her passing has been hard for me these past few days.

I should say Mark Twain, who convinced me that Christianity was mythical.

Dan Forrest, Composer

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yQ9KLpWMGx8

This rare gift broke my addiction to the Tabernacle Choir.

The music is beautiful.

At the same time, it is apparently high level artistic, evangelical Christian, devotional music--in the same general "mode" as is much of historical Catholic devotional music. (Think of the well known classic composers who wrote liturgical music as a part of their creative works.)

I’ve been blessed to know the most awesome person on Earth. Sure, wouldn’t you like to know?

Jackie Robinson He opened doors for so many people of color . he was a fantastic baseball player and carried himself with incredible amounts of dignity and bravery in the face of abuse

Paul H Dunn

From the stories i have heard, he was quite a hero......

You know what? I've heard he's easy to emulate!

Rango. Sure, he’s a made up hero, but he’s all of us. Be the hero of your own story.

i DON'T REALLY HAVE ONE

He was killed for his wallet while digging for fishing bait alone, in a remote area of the river, when the tide was out.

Hard to pick just one, but how about Fawn Brodie?

Pretty amazing that she was brave enough to publically let her instincts as a historian reign over her Mormon background. She was also brave enough to do the same with Thomas Jefferson writing about his relationship with his slave, Sally Hemmings. She took a lot of heat for both bios and never backed down. Whistleblowers are rarely celebrated as heroes; it's a lonely road. I wish she hadn't died so young, so she could have enjoyed more fruits of her work.

And on top of that, I think she is a marvelous stylist as a writer. Of all the Mormon histories I've read, she is the standout writer, IMO.

Good choice. I also agree that she wrote particularly well. No Man Knows My History is such a vivid book, as well as being a pretty serious work of history (I know there are some quibbles, but she was, on the whole, historically correct, too, as far as the evidence points...).

Anyone who stands up against all odds to a majority of wrongdoers get my vote. Martin Luther King and Nelson Mandela have always stood out to me. People with courage like this fill up my heart and give me hope.
On a personal level it was my maternal grandmother. This lady went through a lot, and also never had anything in terms of material possessions. Nevertheless she was unfailingly kind, gentle, good-humoured and easy going, and was never bitter.

She was also an atheist; my parents implied to me that this was due to a lack of education. How wicked such a thought is. I realise now that my Nan was far more wise than anyone else in my family, even though she lacked all the educational and social standing that they all have.

She was the nicest person I’ve ever known. ‘God’ knows how certain other family members turned out as they did.

Joe R. Banister