
I have spent a lifetime looking for heroes.
When I was young, they came larger than life. They were people – loosely defined – with super powers, overdeveloped senses and abilities, or mythological figures often of divine descent, endowed with great strength or courage.
My heritage kicked in early. I sought the perfection and near invincibility of Achilles, the strength of Hercules, later the marksmanship of Robin Hood, Ivanhoe and Hawkeye.
Some came with colorful costumes, some without; but they were basically courageous and admirable people, almost always men, not too far from reality, prototypes for the heroes of the Silver Screen.
There, heroic figures of every description, real and imagined, protagonists of books, films, plays, and myths. filled our dreams and fired our imaginations. Cowboys and Indians prevailed. They followed us home from the movie theaters and battled in the back yard,
I still remember most visibly the summer my big brother honored me by bestowing on me the title of “cowboy.” It was a gift. Everyone knew the cowboys always won – no matter the odds, no matter the challenge.
We chased each other around the neighborhood, whooping and yelling until I found myself captured in the coal shed, watching while my brother tied me to the stake.
Fortunately, he wasn’t much of boy scout and lost interest when our mother called lunch; but, unfortunately, not before dropping the match he was holding.
Lunch or dinner was always a subject of great interest at our house. I wriggled free and followed my brother into the house, thinking nothing of it until the fire trucks arrived.
A couple of years later, I met a hero of a different sort. Mrs. Parmalee, the City librarian, had taken a liking to me. Routinely through my high school years, she asked me to help clean out her inventory at the end of the year with the understanding I could keep whatever surplus books or magazines I liked.
The National Geographic was particularly prized. I always went there first and went home with a full year’s supply. That’s where I met Jane Goodall. She was not much older than I was at that time but she had courage far beyond anything I could imagine, courage enough to wander off alone into the African jungle to study chimpanzees, courage enough to deny the doubters who said she couldn’t, said she wouldn’t, and couldn’t believe she did.
She was a girl, first of all, and “girls didn’t do things like that.” She was slight – maybe 110 lbs – and far from physically imposing. She was gentile in nature with a quiet determination that served her well.
Standing next to her in Baltimore some 60 years later, I am still amazed by the strength of her spirit, commitment and will. I know she is a week shy of her 91st birthday (April 3), and I know she has been traveling non-stop for 50 years, making her case for chimpanzees, mankind, and other endangered species. I know there is a crowd of several thousand waiting to hear her speak, including a couple that had driven from Mississippi to Maryland for the occasion. I know there is a crowd of similar size waiting for her at three stops later in the week on the West Coast.
When we hug, I can feel the weariness in her bones. Yet, strangely enough, I can feel myself drawing energy from her and I know there is no quit in her. She will do what she can and long as she can to make the world a better place for every living thing. Would that we would all do the same. After a lifetime searching, I now know what a hero looks like.