COURAGE AND HEROISM
| HOME | CONTACT: RICHARD SCOTT AT RICHARD.SCOTT2000@COMCAST.NET |
How do you define a hero?
Posted on September 3, 2011 by Richard Scott
| What’s your
definition of a hero?
A few years ago I had to undergo surgery. When I first met my surgeon I was stunned by his appearance. He was tall, about six-four, and big, maybe 240 or more. And solid as a rock. When we shook hands, my normal-sized hand disappeared in his enormous grip. It got me to thinking: I knew he had an excellent reputation, but would I want this ham-handed giant holding a scalpel? Don’t you need delicate hands to perform delicate surgery? Needless to say, you’re a little nervous anyway before surgery. Seeing this un-surgeon-like surgeon didn’t help. But then I remembered that a nurse had told me that this guy had been a Navy Seal. That he’d seen big-time action in Afghanistan. This started me thinking in a different direction. When I threw in his Navy Seal credentials on top of his reputation as a surgeon, I felt a lot more comfortable. Why? Because from doing the research for my books I knew what these men had to do to become Seals. They were not only good, they were perfectionists performing under extremely stressful and highly risky conditions. As far as I was concerned, Navy Seals were heroes. I believed this long before I learned that Navy Seal Team Six had taken down Osama Bin Laden. After the demise of Bin Laden, I became even more convinced they were heroes. Which brings me back to my opening question: What’s your definition of a hero? I can’t speak for you, though I have a feeling we might be pretty close on this. I’ve given a lot of thought to what true heroism is. Take sports. I love sports. I’m addicted to baseball, basketball and can’t get enough of football. I’m even learning to appreciate hockey. Strictly as a fan, of course. What really gets to me is when I hear someone refer to a tremendous effort on the playing field as heroic. Or I read about a marathoner giving that extra effort at the tape and falling to the road victoriously, but in total exhaustion. These are tremendous efforts. Admirable efforts, but they’re not heroic. At least not to me. To me to do something heroic is to knowingly put yourself at great risk and still do it. I know, you’ll say that when a football receiver stretches out parallel to the ground and makes a fantastic catch, he’s risking injury. That’s true, but you can’t convince me that he truly fears that he will be mortally injured. He might be, but statistically the chances are slim, and he knows it. So it’s a cool catch and something we all appreciate, but it’s not heroic. Okay, so what is heroic? It’s heroic when a cop goes undercover in a crime syndicate, a drug cartel or a nest of plotting terrorists. Maybe it’s not heroic if a cop goes undercover in a white-collar business trying to uncover evidence against business executives, though it certainly could be risky. But it is heroic when a Secret Service agent throws himself in front of the President when someone is shooting at the him. I think it’s even heroic when a person joins up as a secret agent, for he or she knows that defending the President is part of the job. (Yes, out of the 2,000 agents, 245 are women.) Sure, the agent probably thinks that he or she might never have to do it, so I guess you could say that the degree of heroism is less in the joining up than it is in the actual defense of the President. Which, of course, illustrates that there are degrees of heroism. You don’t have to be in the military, the police or the Secret Service to do something heroic. If you see an accident, and a person is trapped in a burning car, you’re heroic if you as a private citizen risk your life to extricate that auto victim. Okay, you ask, what if you speak up in a public meeting and express an unpopular opinion because you believe it’s important that that opinion be expressed? Doesn’t that take courage? Of course it does. That’s a form of heroism, too. Maybe you’re not risking your life, but you could be risking your reputation or your job. That takes courage. For some people that might be harder than rescuing someone from a burning car. _________________________________________________
Richard Scott is a retired
editor, writer, and publisher, having been president and publisher of
the David McKay Company and president and publisher of Fodor's Travel
Publications. He's also been managing editor of American Bookseller and
Bookselling this Week. In the 70s Mr. Scott was co-host with Isaac
Asimov, Brendan Gill and Nat Hentoff of a talk show called In
Conversation. The show ran on radio station WOR in New York and eleven
other stations around the U.S.
|
BOOKS BY RICHARD SCOTT AVAILABLE IN KINDLE AND TRADE PAPERBACK FORMATS FROM AMAZON
A novel of intrigue, shadowy politics, and shocking surprises that deftly navigates between the chaotic hope and confusion of post-Cold War Moscow and turn-of-the-Millennium Washington. The action is fast paced, and there’s enough hi-tech gadgetry to satisfy the most demanding fans of techno-thrillers.
The year is 1881, and an
athletic-looking President James Abram Garfield—barely four months
in office—steps nimbly down from the presidential carriage as it
pulls up to the bustling Washington Train Depot.
Imagine the highly respected CEO of a giant New York publishing house being blackmailed by one of his own editors. Visualize that same editor found murdered in his office a few days after the blackmail demand.
Salem is the story of two families—the Delanos and the Deanes—who arrive in the New World three years after the Mayflower. They soon find themselves caught up in a group of dissidents who settle in what is now Salem, Massachusetts. In the early chapters this is an heroic saga revealing the struggles of these two families as they face the raw, unforgiving world of seventeenth-century New England.
|
