Typical of any weekday evening, I was watching news the other night when they gave their version of a hero. They were doing a story on a group of women whom they were calling heroes. Their reasoning was that these women had all suffered heart attacks, and now they were running in a 5-K race to raise awareness about heart disease. I thought: “Heroes? Really? With all our Medal of Honor recipients and war veterans, you’re rating a group of women who are running to save their own lives as heroes?” What a loud of steaming crap!

I’m sure it requires a good deal of courage to start running following a heart attack, but the fact is that they didn’t start running until after their heart attack, and it seems to me like they’re only running now to keep from having another. In short, their running is self-serving and not a sacrifice for the benefit of others (a point which I feel should be included in the definition of a hero; that their actions are a sacrifice for the benefit of others).

After hearing this story, I began to consider who I would regard as a hero.

My thoughts went back to a rainy evening in late October in the mid-1990s. I was sitting in the front seat of our rental car as my mother drove us through dreary East Moline, Illinois. The overcast sky seemed to hang all the way down to the street, yet it didn’t obscure the bare, skeletal trees and dark buildings. The general scene of oppression reeked of autumn’s death and the upcoming winter in the frigid north. The thought of our destination and my mother’s sobbing only added to the illusion of despair. I was thinking that a cloud formation overhead resembled a human skull when my mother sobbed, “He was such a kind, gentle man.” Since she spoke in the past tense and we were on the way to her father’s funeral, I had to assume she was speaking of her father, Orval.  I knew no one would ever accuse my father of being a kind, gentle man, an abusive alcoholic maybe, but my father didn’t have a kind or gentle notion during his wicked life. I considered my grandfather’s life and had to agree with my mother’s assessment. But I didn’t realize the true extent of my grandfather’s love and sacrifice until after she relayed more of Orval’s life. My memories of the bald, old man, with hands which trembled so badly that he couldn’t drink his coffee or get a spoonful of peas to his mouth, were of someone who would take out his teeth and chase me around the room while laughing like a loon. If he wasn’t tickling me till I peed my pants, he’d chase me with his electric razor. Most of all, I remembered him for being my only adult relative who never laid a finger on me in anger. Nor do I recall him ever losing his temper. A deeply religious man, it always amazed me when he used the N-word for people he otherwise just called “colored.”

Once my mother got herself more under control, she told me the story of her parent’s courtship and unlikely marriage. My grandmother’s parents, the Larsons, were first generation Swedish immigrants straight off the boat from Stockholm following the First World War. Orval and my grandmother, Mildred, met in a Kansas high school, where Orval was a baseball and track star while he dreamed of playing professional baseball. This was in the late 1920s.As their courtship thickened, Orval’s dream came true. He was drafted after high school by the Chicago White Sox as a pitcher. Unfortunately, he was immediately sent to the minors. Fortunately, he was sent to the Kansas league where his love could flourish. As only cruel fate can dictate when everything seems to be right with life, the stock market crashed in 1929, assisting the United States into the Great Depression. Orval was one of the lucky ones who had a job, but he was only paid for games pitched, which amounted to very little He certainly couldn’t afford to get married and raise a family. It was then that Orval made what I feel is the ultimate sacrifice. He gave up his dream. He quit baseball and got a job as a Greyhound bus driver so he could marry his love

Thanks to that, I am here today, So, Orval Cathcart, you are my definition of a hero. As someone who played sports through college, and once dreamed of going further, I understand and appreciate how difficult and painful your sacrifice must have been. I thank you for being part of my life, and passing on your legacy.