My brother Mike has been my best friend and the rock that I lean on for as long as I can remember. Sometimes I think life is unfair that Mike has had to give so much to me while going without so much in his own life.
Growing up, I always looked up to my big brother because he was such a great person. He was popular and had a lot of friends, he was an honor roll student, and a good athlete. But he was never stuck up or treated anyone badly, not even me, his kid sister.
When Mike went to college, I was a freshman in high school, and when he came home for vacations he always spent some time with me one on one, even though he had lots of friends who wanted him to hang out with them. Mike knew that I never had as easy a time as he did; I wasn’t as popular, and I was a mediocre student at best. But he always told me to do my best and that if I worked hard enough I would do well.
Unfortunately, I didn’t listen to Mike, or to our parents, and I got pregnant and dropped out of school the summer before my senior year. My parents were very upset with me and it really hurt our relationship, but Mike was supportive and stood by me all the way. When my son was born, my father refused even to see him, and even now, six years later, he has seen his grandson just once, even though we live in the same town.
Mike moved back home after college, and we shared a house for a year while I went back to night school to get my GED. Mike worked all day to pay the bills, and then watched my son at night when I went to classes.
I have never managed to get much more than minimum wage jobs, and Mike has helped me out financially over and over again. He co-signed for my car, has helped me pay of some medical bills, and is always very generous at birthdays and Christmas. He also loves my son, and plays the role of father figure, teaching him to ride a bicycle, taking him fishing, and being his “buddy.”
Last year Mike won a small lottery prize, and instead of spending the money on a car or something else for himself, he took my son and me on vacation to Disneyworld, and paid for everything. Then he put $2,500 into a college fund for my son, and said that by the time he is ready to go to college, it will help him get a good education.
I always tell Mike that he needs to spend his money on himself, but he says he has a good job and makes more than enough for all of his needs, and that he enjoys being there for me when I need him. That’s why my big brother is my hero.
The first person who ever showed any real interest in me and who took the time to get involved in my life was my homeroom teacher in my first year of high school, Mrs. Samantha Royce. She changed my life.
I grew up in a rundown fifth floor apartment in Philadelphia, the daughter of Polish immigrants who never adapted to life in the United States. My father believed that coming to this new country would suddenly turn his life of poverty and hardship around, and my mother resented having to leave their home and everybody they knew behind.
They were both miserable, and I have always wondered why they didn’t just go back home. My father found a minimum wage paying job, and spent most of his time off the job drinking, and my mother was always waiting to pounce on him and resume their constant argument the minute he walked in the door. My memories of growing up were of loud arguments between my parents, things being thrown across the room, dirty dishes and clothes piled up everywhere, and roaches crawling across the kitchen counter.
Neither of my parents ever paid me any attention, except to complain about the other one, or to send me to the corner store for cigarettes, which they both chain smoked. My father could speak just enough English to get by on the job, and my mother refused to learn a new language, so I was the one who had to talk to the landlord when he came to collect the rent, which we were always behind on. I remember him screaming at me and threatening to throw us out on the street, even though I was just a little girl.
As I got older, I started to rebel, drinking and getting involved with the wrong crowd, but I don’t think my parents ever noticed if I was there or not. By the time I started high school, I was a wild child. I craved affection, which was non-existent in my home, and I quickly learned that there were lots of boys who were more than willing to pay attention to me, for a price.
All of the students at my school liked my ninth grade teacher, Mrs. Royce. She was pretty, friendly, and she knew each student by name and seemed to take a real interest in all of us.
Midway through the first semester, I was making out with my boyfriend in a secluded nook off the main hallway when Mrs. Royce saw us. She told my boyfriend to get back to class, and told me she wanted to talk to me after school.
I wasn’t concerned, because never in my life had anyone cared enough to say anything to me about what I did.
But when I showed up in her classroom at the end of the day, Mrs. Royce locked the door and pulled down the blind over the window, then sat down with me. She told me that there was a real life waiting for me, a life full of promise and opportunity, but that I was throwing it away before I ever got the chance to experience it.
She told me that the world would make a space for anyone who was willing to work hard to get ahead, but it already had a lot of teenaged unwed mothers and if I kept going the way I was, I’d join their ranks.
“You don’t know what it’s like where I come from,” I told her. “You come from a different world than I do. You never had it hard in your life.”
“Did you ever notice that I always wear long sleeved blouses and dresses?” Mrs. Royce asked me. Actually, I had not noticed. She stood up loosed her blouse, and pulled it off her shoulders. I was shocked when I saw the crude tattoos on both of her upper arms, one the name of a well known gang from my very neighborhood.
“We come from the same world,” Mrs. Royce told me. “I ran with the gangs, I slept with the boys to get noticed, I did the drugs and the alcohol that you are doing right now. I was you, Janelle! But I turned my life around, and you can too.”
The she told me about how she herself had gotten pregnant at fourteen, and again at seventeen. About how hard it as to give her babies up for adoption. About being beaten up by her boyfriend and spending the night in the emergency room.
“That was when I realized that I needed to get away,” she told me. “Before it was too late. And you need to get away too, Janelle. Get away before it pulls you down so far that you can never get back up.”
By then we were both crying, and I asked Mrs. Royce what I could do, I was just a kid with no money and no place to go. She told me that she would make some phone calls.
Two days later I was in a temporary foster home as a child at risk, and a few weeks later my parents never even came to court to defend charges that they were not providing a good home environment for me. I went through some hard times adjusting, but with the help of my loving foster parents, we got through it together.
Today I have a good career and a good life, and when I go back to Philadelphia to visit my parents on occasion, I look around at the filth and the drinking, and the hopeless people in that old neighborhood, and I am so very grateful for Mrs. Royce talking the time to help straighten me out.
My father, George Weylund. is a hero for his gentleness as well as his strength, his wisdom as well as his ability to see the humor in everything, and most of all for the deep love and commitment he has for his family.
Daddy was a mailman during his first career, and he really did live by the motto “Neither rain nor snow, nor sleet nor dark of night shall stay these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds.” He delivered mail on a rural route in North Dakota, and even when other carriers would determine that the weather was too bad to make their deliveries, Daddy pressed on. It was a point of honor with him that the mail must go through, and he got it there one way or another.
I used to love riding with Daddy on his mail route in the summer, because everybody knew him and would wave, or come out to the mailbox to say hello. Since many of the farms and ranches he delivered to were miles from town, if somebody needed a prescription from the drug store, they would leave the money in the mailbox, and the next day Daddy would bring it to them. Everybody on his route loved my Daddy.
When Daddy retired from the post office, he drove school bus for several years, and parents always knew their children were in good hands with Daddy behind the wheel. The kids loved him too, but Daddy was no pushover, and more than one tough farm boy got his ears boxed for being unruly on the bus.
From the time I was a little girl, I had one dream, to become a Forest Ranger. But back in those days, that was “man’s work” and everybody told me that it could never happen. Everybody but my Daddy, that is. He always encouraged all of his children and told us we could accomplish anything we set our hearts on, if we tried hard enough.
With Daddy’s encouragement and support, during my summer vacations from college I worked manning fire lookout towers in Montana and Wyoming, and that was my foot in the door with the Forest Service. It was my Daddy who pinned my badge onto my uniform the day I was sworn in as an official Forest Ranger, and I don’t know who was the most proud, Daddy or me. It is because of him that I have accomplished everything I have in life.
My husband Luke would be my hero even if he wasn’t such a wonderful person. His kindness and integrity make him really stand out in a crowd.
When we first met, I was a night desk clerk at a hotel, and Luke was a taxicab driver who dropped off and picked up guests who were staying with us.
Luke impressed me because he always carried his passengers’ luggage in or out for them, and I noticed that he always held the door for everyone. When he came in, he always made a point of telling me hello and asking how my night was going. Most of the cabbies just pulled up front and waited, or honked their horns.
One slow night I was studying for a college class I was taking, and Luke had to wait for a customer who had overslept and missed his wake up call to come down. Luke noticed my textbook and we got to talking. I told him I was a year away from my degree in accounting, and he encouraged me to stick with it.
Well, I did, and soon after I graduated, Luke and I were married. In the fifteen years since then, I have always been amazed at how far he will go out of his way to help someone or just to make somebody else feel good about themselves.
He never fails to notice when myself, my mother or sisters, and any other women we know has a new hairstyle, and always compliments it. We have several young extended family members who are in high school or college, and just as he did with me, Luke always shows an interest in their classes and encourages them to work hard and succeed.
He seems to take a particular interest in elderly people, and my grandparents love him because he always spends a lot of time talking to them and listening to them reminisce about “the good old days.” I have also seen him stop to talk to a senior citizen in the park or at a grocery store, taking the time to let them know they are special.
Luke is the most honest person I have ever known. Occasionally customers will leave something in his cab, and he always goes out of his way to get it back to them. Doing this costs him money, because he gets paid by the fare, but he always says if the situation were reversed, he’d want someone to do the same for him.
One time a woman left her purse in the cab, with over $3,500 in it. Luke drove to the address on her driver’s license to return it, only to learn that she had moved from there the year before. He talked to the neighbors, was able to get her phone number, and called to get her new address, then drove over 25 miles to deliver the purse. All told, it took almost half of his shift. She never even gave him a tip, either for her original ride, or for returning her purse, but Luke said that was okay, he was building up good karma.
Luke could easily find other work that pays higher, and many of our family and friends have urged him to do so over and over. But he is happy driving his taxi, he loves all of the people he meets and he has a lot of regular customers who depend on him to get them to their appointments, shopping, and such. He says it’s not about the money, it’s about loving what you do.
As for me, I’m just happy knowing he is content in his work, and grateful I have such a nice man to share my life with.
Have you ever heard the old saying that “old age and treachery always overcome youth and skill?”
Apparently a young thug in Australia never had heard it, so he learned that lesson the hard way, when he tried to rip off 72 year old Dawn Fraser at her daughter’s home on Queensland’s Sunshine Coast.
In Dawn’s own words “This guy grabbed me, so I grabbed him by the ear and I kicked him in the groin. I have a titanium knee, so it must have hurt him. He had to let me go. He threatened my life and I got really annoyed about that and just grabbed him by the ear and the hair.”
The home invader managed to break free and escape his intended victim, but can you imagine how that must have affected his ego? It’s one thing to be a failure as a criminal, but to be beat up by a little old lady really adds insult to injury! Two teenagers have been arrested in the case and are being held for trial.
Of course, Dawn Fraser isn’t your typical elderly woman. In fact, she is a four time gold medal winner who represented Australia in the Olympic Games from 1956 through 1964. So stick that in your crack pipe and smoke it!
Dawn may be an Olympic hero, but with a chuckle she admits to having a little larceny in her own past. It seems that as a prank during the 1964 Tokyo Games, she joined a midnight raid to steal a flag from the entrance to the Emperor’s palace. She was caught and arrested, but when the authorities learned who she was, she was released and given the flag as a gift from the Emperor.
As for her hapless assailant, Dawn said “I came up for a holiday and here I am being threatened with my life! Not good. Not good at all.”
I bet that’s one hoodlum who will think twice before he picks his next victim!
My boss, Mike Hunsaker, has been such a good man to work for and such a good friend to so many that I want to see him recognized as a Today’s Hero. Nobody I know deserves this recognition as much as Mike.
I first came to work for Mike six years ago, when I was 62 years old and found that my Social Security check was not going to be enough to live on. I applied for every job I could find, and soon learned that nobody wants to hire a person my age.
In my previous career as an electrical engineer, I was well respected in my field. But when the aerospace industry tanked, my retirement disappeared and I was left scrambling for anything I could get, and not able to compete with younger job candidates.
I met Mike quite by accident when I took my car into his dealership for service. While the car was in the shop, I got to talking to Mike and he asked me how I was enjoying retirement. I told him that I had no retirement as my employer had gone bankrupt, and that trying to stretch my Social Security to make ends meet just wasn’t getting the job done. I told Mike how hard I had been looking for a new job, and he suggested I might want to try my hand at automobile sales. I had never been a salesman, but I was desperate and willing to try anything.
Mike spent a lot of time with me teaching me how to greet a customer and determine what kind of car they needed and what their budget was, and then how to demonstrate the car to them. On my very first day on the job I sold a car!
Mike does not believe in high pressure sales tactics, and though his dealership is small compared to many, he has a large and loyal customer base. This is because he goes out of his way to be fair with customers, and he is completely honest. People know that if Mike says a used car has been checked out by the mechanics and is in good condition, they can trust his word, and know that he will stand behind it if there is a problem. Many times I have seen him do repairs after a sale that other dealers would not consider, or agree to do needed work at cost to save the customer money.
Mike treats all of his employees with honesty and respect, from the salesmen and managers to the lot attendants and mechanics. He is very generous and has advanced employees money to help them through rough times, and loaned at least two that I know of the money to make down payments on their own homes. He also chooses one day a month at random, and takes that day’s total profits and divides it up equally among all of the employees as a cash bonus.
Mike gave me a chance when nobody else would, and because of him I am able to continue to work, and live a much better lifestyle than I had been facing. I will always appreciate his faith in me, and his friendship to myself and all of my coworkers.
My friend Rick Carpenter has shown his goodness to other people so many times and in so many ways that you would never have room to list them all in your blog.
Rick is a minister and totally devoted to his congregation, his family, and the community at large. Whether he is visiting the sick, counseling a family with problems, or helping to lay someone to rest, Rick gives all of himself each and every time.
I have had the honor to work with Rick for many years, and I have seen his acts of love and charity over and over again. He has reached into his pocket and used his own money to help out someone in trouble who had a family to feed, or rent past due. He has helped people make home repairs, driven them to doctor appointments, and even mowed the grass for elderly members of his congregation who are not up to the chore. More than once he has gotten out of a sick bed to shovel the snow for an older person, or to go comfort a grieving family who had lost a beloved member.
The one escape Rick allows himself is golf, and he loves to play at least once a week. Last summer another golfer had a heart attack, and when Rick heard his wife’s screams, he ran to where the man had fallen. Rick was able to give CPR and keep him alive until paramedics arrived. After the ambulance left to take the man to the hospital and all of the excitement had died down, Rick paused to say a prayer for his recovery, and then shouldered his golf bag and went back to his game.
I saw the whole thing, and I was amazed at Rick’s calm demeanor. “You just saved that man’s life,” I said.
“No, God wasn’t ready for him yet,” Rick said. “I just did the legwork to help keep him here.”
Rick’s favorite duty as a minister is performing weddings, and he has officiated at over 100 ceremonies in his time. He never accepts any compensation for his services, and always gives the new bride and groom a very nice Bible, personalized with their names stamped into the cover in gold, as a wedding present. He said his greatest honor as a minister was three years ago, when he performed the ceremony to join his widowed mother and her new husband in holy matrimony.
For me, my greatest honor has been to call Rick Carpenter my friend.
I met Warren Stroudmeier when I went to pick his daughter Leslie up for our first date. I was a cocky young man who had just quit high school in my junior year because I was bored in class and wanted to earn money.
“So you are in my daughter’s class?” her father asked me in his thick German accent, while I waited for her to come downstairs.
“No, I quit school,” I told him. “Too much money waiting to be made to waste time sitting in a classroom.”
“And what do you do to earn this money?” he asked.
I told him that I worked at the Shell station pumping gas.
“That is not a job,” he told me. “That is kid stuff. How do you expect to earn a living and support a family that way?”
I was a bit miffed, but I told him that I was making good money, and I wasn’t getting married any time soon anyway. When Leslie came down the stairs, her father told her “Go back to your room, you are not going out with this boy. He has no future, and he has no intentions of settling down anytime soon. He can come back when he grows up.”
She started to protest, but one look from her father cut her off and she retreated back up the steps. I couldn’t believe it!
“What’s your problem?” I asked her father. “It’s not like we’re old enough to get married anyway. It’s just a date!”
“I have no problem,” he told me, “I have a good job, I have a good family. What do you have? A hot rod? Get in your hot rod and go away and come back when you grow up.”
I left a patch of rubber half a block long when I drove away, and Leslie avoided me for months after that. But I didn’t care, there were plenty of other girls, gas was 32 cents a gallon, and I was making enough money to get by, as long as I lived with my parents.
That all ended two months after my eighteenth birthday, when Uncle Sam came calling. A few weeks later I was in Basic Training, and not long afterward I was on an airplane headed to Korea. I guess I couldn’t complain though, because a lot of the guys in my Basic Training company got orders to Vietnam instead.
When my two years were up, I went back to my hometown and started looking for a job. But there was a recession going on, and there weren’t many jobs available for a high school dropout, and what few there were didn’t pay much.
One day I answered a newspaper ad for a delivery man at a furniture store, and I was surprised to see that the receptionist was Leslie, from my old high school. We talked a few minutes and caught up on old times, and then she took me back to the store’s owner for my interview. I was even more surprised when I found out that her father owned the store! But what really blew me away was that he remembered me!
“So, Mr. Pump Jockey, how is the gas station business?” he asked me.
I told him that I had been in the Army, and was looking for any job. I could drive a truck, I was strong, and I wasn’t afraid of hard work.
“Yes, I believe all that,” he told me, “but are you any smarter?”
“Yes sir,’ I told him, “I’m smart enough to know how dumb I was way back then and I sure wish I had stayed in school. But here I am.”
“Okay, I think you are smarter,” he told me. “So I will not hire you as fulltime deliveryman. What I will do is hire you part time, and pay you fulltime wages, if you take GI Bill and go to school and get your education.”
“Are you kidding me?” I asked him. “Why would you do that?”
“Because you are smart enough to know you were wrong and made a mistake, and man enough to admit it. Besides, now maybe you are ready to settle down, and my Leslie, she never got her date with you. But I tell you this, you must work hard, you must study hard, and you must be gentleman on that date. Otherwise I throw you out in the street”
I took that stubborn old German up on his generous offer, and when I went back to school I found that I really liked it that time around. I got a degree in business administration, and today he is retired and I manage his furniture store, making more money that I ever thought I could.
And I did get that date with Leslie. Nothing clicked there for us, but she eventually introduced me to one of her friends, and Leslie was her maid of honor at our wedding.
My first boss, Stacey Duncan, helped shape my life when I was just a teenager, and he will always be a hero to me.
I came from a very dysfunctional family; growing up we lived on food stamps and whatever my parents didn’t drink up from our welfare checks. Both of my sisters got pregnant by the time they were seventeen. I was the first one in my family to graduate from high school, and I have Mr. Duncan to thank for that.
When I started my junior year, I wanted to have decent clothes to wear, like my friends did, so I got a part time job waiting tables in a restaurant. Because I was young and cute, the men who stopped in always flirted with me, and because I loved the attention and the tips, I flirted right back.
I quickly learned that the more I flirted, the bigger the tips got. If they made a suggestive comment, I came right back at them with one of my own, and usually tried to outdo them. Before too long, my stations were always filled with guys, and the laughter and raunchy jokes were always going on.
I had quickly developed a major crush on my new boss, who was handsome, friendly, and seemed rich to a poor girl like me. Mr. Duncan was probably in his early 30s and he owned two restaurants, drove a sports car, and dressed well. He was also married and had a beautiful wife. Still, a girl can dream, can’t she?
One day I was in the kitchen talking to one of the other waitresses, and I said what a hunk Mr. Duncan was and made an off color comment about him, and her eyes got huge and her face turned bright red. I turned around and he was standing right there! He didn’t say anything, just went into his office. I was so embarrassed I just wanted to die.
That evening when we were closing up, Mr. Duncan asked me to step into his office. I was sure I was going to be fired. He told me to sit down, and said that we needed to have a talk.
“Cassie, you are a drop dead gorgeous girl,” he told me, “but you have a lot more going for you than that. You could have a very good future ahead of you, but you have to stop thinking and talking like a girl from the wrong side of the tracks. This isn’t a bar, it’s a restaurant. You need to start being a lady if you ever want to get anywhere in life. There are a lot of guys who’ll show you a good time for a while, but you need to hold out for one who will give you a future.”
“I just joke with them for the tips,” I told him, my eyes never leaving the floor.
“Cassie, if you don’t value yourself, nobody else ever will,” he told me. “You can joke with customers, and still be a lady. But when you crawl down in the gutter for a tip, you might as well stay there. And what’s even worse, when you crawl down in the gutter, you take a piece of my business and my reputation with you, because when you talk to one of my customers, you represent me.”
“So, am I fired?” I asked him.
“No, but I’ll be watching you,” he told me. “Let’s get past this and go on, okay?”
From then on, Mr. Duncan and I became close, but strictly in a business sense, and I worked for him for the next six years. I did clean up my act, and I learned that I could be friendly with my customers and still act like a lady, and the tips still came in.
And I always remembered what he told me about valuing myself. When I would get frustrated and wanted to just quit school, I remembered that if I wanted a future I needed to get an education. When some guy on a date wanted more than I was ready to give, I heard Mr. Duncan’s words in my head and stopped things right there.
Today I am married to a wonderful man and have two little girls, and my life is so far removed from the one I grew up in. I have the life I deserve, because Mr. Duncan convinced me that I did deserve more than a couple of fatherless babies and a welfare check.
My husband Alan is a hero because he has devoted his entire life to helping those less fortunate.
Alan’s mother died when he was very young, and his father was not interested in the responsibility of raising a child, so he was shuffled from one reluctant family member’s home to the next while growing up. Always feeling like an outsider, Alan joined the military as soon as he was old enough, and spent most of the next ten years overseas.
His tours in the Philippines and South America introduced him to the very real poverty that so much of the world lives under. Alan spent a lot of his free time volunteering to build homes and schools in the local areas, and using the skills the military had taught him as a medical technician to treat minor injuries and teach people basic hygiene and health care. He was appalled to see the nurses in one hospital re-using syringes on their patients, because they did not have enough of them to be able to dispose of them after each use.
A year after we were married, Alan was injured in an accident on duty, and was unable to continue his military career. Though he fought it all the way to the top, he was discharged with a disability. Alan felt that he was still very capable of giving something to the world, so we volunteered with a non-profit charitable group that travels to Mexico and Central America to provide health care to isolated communities.
For the last nine years we have spent several months at a time volunteering, and we both feel that we have helped make a difference in the lives of so many who are less fortunate than ourselves. When we are back at home in the United States, Alan speaks to community organizations and church groups, urging them to help collect used eyeglasses, medical supplies, and other things we can use in our work. When we have accumulated enough, we load it all into our motorhome and the 24 foot trailer we tow behind it, and off we go again south of the border to deliver it.
The military felt that Alan was not capable of serving any longer, but they did not know my husband! I have seen him on his feet for ten to twelve hours a day helping doctors treat patients, or building houses, medical clinics, and schools to make the world a better place to live in for people who otherwise would never have it. That’s why Alan is my hero.
