Who are your heroes?

Tina Turner.

Don't have one.

John Wayne
Mother Theresa
Our guys/gals in Iraq
Oliver North
Jackie Kennedy

... so many more, it's difficult to place them in proper order.

Richard Stallman
Helio Gracie
Max Beerbohm
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Alan Turing
Louis Pasteur
Edgar Allan Poe

the list goes on

Okay, now that we have a few here, why are they your heroes? What qualities make them worthy of that elevated status?

I don't really have a hero, per se.

There are family members I still look up to.

My dad for one.

We didn't get along well growing up, and so consequently I was unable to fully appreciate what he did for us. Sure, I knew, and understood, but it wasn't a primary concern at the time.

Now, being a father myself, I see what he did and what he tried to do. I am constantly asking myself "How would Dad have handled this. What would he have done?" I try hard to be the parent he was, and sometimes I don't feel I measure up.

My grandfather was another one. Always there to support me, and to nudge me in the way I needed to go. I miss him dearly, and wish I could have spent more time with him in the last few years of my life. Sadly, it wasn't as easy. I had a family, and lived 1800 miles away from where he was. Not that I didn't get to see him, it just wasn't as often as I would have liked.

As far as outside my family. . . well. . .Eminem comes to mind. Now, I don't always agree with his music, but I do respect him for getting out of that **** life he was in, and making better from himself. It's not an easy thing to do, and he suceeded remarkably. Even if he is just a flavor of the month.

Ouside of that, I'm hard pressed to think of any non-fictoinal character that I admire. Sure, it's easy to admire a fictonal one. . . they can be created in any image. But real life people. . . I'm a big believer in fate and destiny, and that we're here to learn and accomplish certain things, so a lot of things people do I merely see as things they were supposed to do.

Everyone on my list did something unique, they all have "hack value" They took what they knew and made a difference. All we can do in life is try to make an inpact and the ppl I admire did that in an extrodenary(sp) way. They were not sheep, they did things in ways the average person would not think to do them.

I have some heroes I want to list and then, ta da, some heroines. Though to me hero encompasses both, they still may need to be explained.

Going way back, prior to Louis Pasteur, I'll take Leeuwenhoek into my camp, the original microscopist.

Am interested in Scarpa, in Venice, many years ago.
Had a minute's interest in Cola di Rienzo.
I'm pretty keen on Brunelleschi.
I am generally hostile to saints and sainthood, but Francis interests me.
I was raised on Damian the Leper, and maybe they were right.
there are a lot of people I could name, not quite sure of, not for their failings but my lack of seeing....
I see I haven't mentioned a woman yet.
Considering.

Tina Turner, a beautiful, sexy, much-admired performer overcame years of hidden physical and emotional abuse, allowed by a lack of self-esteem and a fear of being alone, caught up and brought up in the world of men being all-powerful, all-controlling, brainwashed into accepting the abuse, believing that leaving him would be abandoning him like everyone else had, she overcame all of this, found the courage after over twenty years to leave and in her fourties, when most performers are hanging up their dancing shoes, she began a new life, a new career, topping the record charts, selling out concert halls, doing it all on her own (with great management). And looking GOOD.
She's fierce. She's my heroine.

Most of my hero(ine)s are literary, though I don't really have heroes, but rather people to whom I look up.

I think that Choderlos Laclos had a mindblowing talent when looking at humans, and he did it all in his epistolary novel, in such an amusing, and disturbing, way. I really look up to him. Dostoevsky was a real master, too.

As do I Sylvia Plath-- through all her turmoil, she was one of the first to form a strong, sometimes contradictory, original female voice, one of the first since Emily Dickinson, whom I admire a lot too.

Others:

Jenner
Ted Hughes
Robert Peel
Lord Palmerston
Martin Luther King, Jr.

eoe: Oooo! Good explanation!

I don't have anyone I'd call a hero exactly. There are people I admire. One of them is Jimmy Carter. I think the American people lost out when he wasn't re-elected. He is a spiritual man dedicated to helping improve the world. He recognizes his human failings and aspires to be a better person. Everything I have read about how the man conducts his life seems to indicate his desire to make the world a better place to live in.

Mr. Carter was too good for the White House.

Don't know about heroes, but I greatly admire Oprah Winfrey, and think her achievements merit the rewards she has in life.