Inspirational People

Two people.

First, my maternal grandfather. A strong, charismatic man who lived a hard life. He was an individual, and didn't seem to care what other people thought. I liked that a lot.

Second, a college English professor. To him, I was just another anonymous student. To me, he was a revelation. He assumed we all read and understood what we were assigned. His discussions always went beyond the obvious. He made me THINK. I liked that a lot.

My Grandmother.

She was such a wise woman, her nicknames sucked though, freakles, okay I had them then, and "fanny?" WT?

But she tought me so much about life, people and how not to judge.

Love you grandma.


My first boss although eventually he tried to get me into his pants after some years, with the following line that I could never work there again, urm, 10 years, a chain of restaurants and morals...never happened.

Mother Teressa just because.

Princess Diana because even though she was lost, she was a giver, she believed in love, had compassion and was someone who wanted to change what was going on with Titles... Think William has followed suit and married the right lady.

Speaking as a 61-year-old white guy, several people immediately come to my mind. (There are others, of course.)

First, my parents, who were Oklahomans of the World War II generation. Both of them taught me moral values -- not by lecturing, but by their example. They were quite ethical and decent in the way they treated others. Although neither of them were political activists, they both rejected Jim Crow long before there was a civil rights movement.

Although my father came from a dysfunctional background (a frequently divorced mother who was a character, no father), he became extremely successful in his chosen field. But he never became arrogant and never looked down on those who made a living in humble occupations. Interestingly enough, even though he became quite wealthy, he’d frequently say, “Don’t trust rich people.” He defied the stereotype of the unfeeling, self-centered alpha male. He was a sensitive man who’d push himself hard out of his sense of responsibility towards others. I wish I had appreciated him more while he was still alive.

My mother was an attractive, intellectual woman. Soap operas and other frivolities were not for her. Once when I was writing a term paper for my high-school sophomore world history class, she and I would talk about its subject, Frederick the Great. She would stand up to her mother, who was a died-in-the-wool racist.

I’ve written about my sister before. Here is a link to the webpage where I posted about her.

http://able2know.org/topic/141146-9

I’d like to add that when she was a high-school student, she ignored cliques. Her friends at school were a diverse group. She detested bullying. She had a friend (another girl) who was Jewish. When some classmates insulted her friend for being Jewish, my sister protested by wearing a Star of David around her neck at school. Once she had graduated from college, she would become an investigative reporter and would try to be as objective as possible.

As far as prominent people are concerned, Raoul Wallenberg immediately comes to my mind -- partly because of the horribly unjust fate he suffered.

Wallenberg was a Swedish businessman who had come from an affluent background. He was running an import-export business when World War II started. Of course, Sweden was a neutral country. Wallenberg’s business partner was a Hungarian Jew, who related reports of the worsening situation of the Jews in his homeland. Instead of choosing to spend the war in comfort at home, Wallenberg successfully prevailed upon government officials to send him to Budapest under diplomatic cover to conduct rescue operations to save Jews from the Holocaust. Instead of sitting behind a desk, Wallenberg had face-to-face encounters with German Nazi SS officers and Arrow Cross (Hungarian fascist) thugs. He repeatedly put his life on the line to save others. Once, when he saw that several Arrow Cross men had rounded up a group of defenseless Jews, Wallenberg ran over to the street where they were and told the thugs they would have to kill him first before they could take those people away. On that occasion Wallenberg wasn’t even armed. The thugs easily could have shot him, and all that the Swedish government would have been able to do is lodge a diplomatic protest. Amazingly, the thugs turned the Jews over to Wallenberg. Several assassination attempts were made on Wallenberg’s life, and he ended up having to sleep in a different place every night. He managed to save the lives of 10,000 people -- one of whom, incidentally, decades later would become a U.S. Congressman, the late California Democrat Tom Lantos. One Wallenberg biographer (probably not just one) said that Wallenberg had been dissatisfied with his life before he went to Hungary. Despite all the horrendous stress, the happiest time in Wallenberg’s life was when he was risking his life for others.

When the Red Army drove the Germans out of Hungary, Wallenberg and his chauffeur (a Hungarian Jewish coal miner whose life Wallenberg had saved) were abducted by agents of Stalin’s brutal secret police to Moscow, where they both disappeared from public view in the notorious Lubianka prison. Soviet spokesmen would later say that he suffered a fatal heart attack, yet over the years survivors of the Soviet gulag would claim that Wallenberg was still alive. In 1975 the Soviet dissident Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn claimed that Wallenberg’s captors offered him life as a free man in the Soviet Union in exchange for publicly denouncing the West. According to Solzhenitsyn, he rejected their offer and went back to the gulag, where he surely must have died years ago. His 100th birthday will be in August of this year.

As a foreign student, Wallenberg had attended the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, where he earned a degree in architecture. His rescue operations were funded in part by the U.S. In 1981 (if I remember the correct year), he became only the third foreigner to be granted honorary U.S. citizenship by an act of Congress. (The other two were General Lafayette and Sir Winston Churchill.)

George Washington Carver - because he was as creative as I'd like to be.
He is an under-appreciated person, I believe.

Too many people to just list on a website, with or without comment.
It wouldn't be fair to any of them.

You can list the ones you are happy to list or the people who have influenced you the most in a life changing way perhaps. Whatever you feel comfortable sharing.