I recently realized that all of my favorite heroes were either warriors or peacemakers. I thought that was a bit odd. Yeah, I know, a lot about me is more than a bit odd, but in this case I dug a little deeper to see if my heroes had attributes in common.
I found several, but will wait to share them until after I’ve mentioned all my heroes. In that way, if you wish, you’ll be able to discover them on your own and may well find several that I missed.
I was originally going to list 5 or 6 of my heroes in the same post, but when I saw the length of the write-up about my first hero I decided the post would be way too long that way, so I plan to create a different post about each.
My heroes aren’t listed in any particular order.
My first hero is James Stewart. Even though audiences often called him “Jimmy”, he preferred to be called “James”. He is one of my favorite actors. (In fact, I just saw him last night in two of my favorite movies, “The Philadelphia Story”—for which he received his only competitive Oscar—and “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington”—which he thought was a more Oscar-worthy performance. I saw them in a double-feature at the beautiful Stanford Theater in downtown Palo Alto, California as part of a wonderful birthday present from My Beloved. I turn 55 in a couple of days.
Anyway, back to Mr. Stewart. Even though he often portrayed heroic characters, that is not why he is one of my heroes. Although he had already received an Academy Award and was a successful actor and could easily have avoided combat when the U.S. entered WWII, Mr. Stewart thought it was his patriotic duty to fight the Nazi’s. He fought to be placed in combat units when he kept being assigned to Public Relations and other positions located in the U.S. earlier in the war.
He eventually succeeded in joining the fight and flew many combat missions deep into Nazi-occupied Europe. His bravery earned him many awards, including two Distinguished Flying Crosses for actions in combat, and the Croix de Guerre. He also received the Air Medal with three oak leaf clusters. (Source: Wikipedia.com)
But all that is only a part of the reason that he is one of my heroes. A key part is his humility. He rarely spoke about his war time exploits, and when the war ended and the movie studios wanted to use his wartime service to help re-launch his career, he refused to let them do it—a heroic stand in itself in my opinion.
Bonus facts:
He and Henry Fonda were very close friends. After they both got married and settled down from the playboy lives they had led earlier in their careers, one of the favorite past-times of these two Hollywood legends was building model planes together.
They were on opposite ends of the political spectrum and wisely chose to never have political discussions with each other. This is especially ironic because their characters in the movie The Cheyenne Social Club” often argued about politics. Mr. Stewart said that in real life they never had an argument about anything.
He was stationed at Moffett Field when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor.
He only married once and stayed with her until her death late in their lives—a relatively rare feat for Hollywood stars. He had adopted two step sons from his wife’s earlier marriage, and James and his wife had twin daughters. As an adopted stepson myself, he gets bonus points from me on that score too. One of his adopted sons was killed in Vietnam.
Russ
Russ Towne's A Grateful Man 