Real Superheroes

hero, heroine n.  A person known for brave or noble deeds.

Hero is a word bandied about all too commonly.  There are childhood heroes, perhaps a teacher; sports heroes, usually the person who scores or prevents the scoring of game-winning points; police; firefighters; war heroes, soldiers who risk their own lives to save those of others.

All of these heroes have had training that enabled their heroism.  All have undergone rigorous and repetitive exercise in preparation for a myriad of contingencies, so that when a situation arises that calls for heroic action, they are able to respond automatically and reflexively.

We are also fast becoming familiar with the term "superhero," thanks to Hollywood's incredible financial success with bringing Marvel and DC comic book characters to life on the big screen.  Here men and women with impressive martial arts training, inventive genius backed by limitless bank accounts, or genes altered by space, arachnoids, chemicals, gamma rays, etc. defeat the forces of evil, always in color and often in 3D.

These are, of course, fictional.  There are, however, real superheroes among us.  I know a few.  And after you've thought about it, you will realize that you do, too.

My definition of a superhero is a person who possesses all the qualities of a hero but lacks the training, skills and resources normally expected in their application.  Instead, my superhero confronts life and death situations with neither mental nor pysical preparation and responds heroically regardless.

Joe was my lunch buddy when we were stationed together in Taiwan.  Practically every day we would leave work around noon and walk over to the dining hall.  I know, I know--in the military, dining facilities are called "mess halls."  Nowhere else that I'm aware of would this name be more of a misnomer.  Year after year our dining hall either won the Hennessy Trophy awarded to the best in the Air Force or finished second.

Anyway, the dining hall had two lines, a regular one that served full meals (steak, chicken, ham, pork, potatoes, vegetables, whatever), and a short-order one (hamburgers, cheeseburgers, hotdogs, French fries, chili, onion rings, etc.).  Joe would first go through the regular line.  After finishing off his plate, he'd go through the short-order line.  Next came a trip to the dessert counter for cake or pie, and lastly to the ice cream box, where he'd rummage around for a vanilla or chocolate cup.  I often found myself looking under the table to see where he was putting all this food, but if he had anything like a hollow leg or a doggie bag I was unable to discover it.

I would bet my paycheck that when Joe left the dining hall he weighed less than when he went in.  I'd put on five pounds just walking by the place.

Earlier this year Joe was diagnosed with Stage 3 ALS, commonly referred to as Lou Gehrig's disease.  Stage 4 is a certainty; it's only a question of when.

I can only imagine the life-changing impact of that diagnosis.  Literally between one moment and the next he and his wife, JoAnn, went from a future of watching grandkids grow and ongoing enjoyment of retirement to one of pain, heartbreak and, finally, loss.

Suddenly confronted with the unspeakable, JoAnn has proven undaunted, undeterred and unwavering in her support of her husband.  When lesser mates would have succumbed to the pressure, the inevitability, and the temptation to throw up their hands in submission, she has taken over the management of their household, learned what she needed to know to guide him through a labyrinth of medical and administrative bureaucracy, and kept his spirits buoyed with her "we'll get through this together" attitutde, all the while keeping her own despair in check.

Yes, I know a few superheroes.  I know JoAnn and a couple of others just like her.  They are my role models, those whom I hope I can emulate but wish I never have occasion to.

Dial 1-800-ASK-RevAL

"Hello.  You've reached the 'Reverend' Al Hotline.  How may I help you right the grievous wrong perpetrated on your black ass by white redneck racists?"

"Yeah, bro, this be Geroshe callin' from Tampa.  Me an' my main homey Lerome got ourselves in some s*** with the man down here, an' we need to know when you comin' to get us some justice."

"Dam', man, them's some names you got. Yo' mamas had a sense o' humor, huh?  I'll get to the spellin' later.  Tell the 'Rev' what happened."

"Well, they's four o' us, see, and we just walkin' down the street, mindin' our own bidnez, chillin', you know, when we see this dude walkin' towards us...."

"What time was this?"

"It was after three in the a.m.   Anyway, he just walkin' towards us, like he finna start some mess, you know?"

"There's one o' him and four o' you, and you thinkin' he gonna start something?"

"Yeah, well, he musta, cuz he not showin' any respect.  He just comin' on like he king o' the 'hood, you know?  You don' be comin' into our turf actin' like you belong, know what I mean?  Least he coulda done is cross over to the other side."

"And what did you do, then?"

"We axe him to give us a dollar, see what he does."

"And what did he do?"

"Man, dude thinks we serious!  He starts reaching for his wallet like we some panhandlers he gonna give some money.  First he in our 'hood, then he dissin' us, thinkin' we some poor bums or something.  We decide we gonna teach this cracker some respect."

"Let me guess.  You threw down on him."

"Well, yeah, what we s'posed to do?  We did a number on his ass.  Broke his nose, knocked out a tooth, left him lying in the street, took his wallet and cellphone.  He lucky we didn't pop a cap on him right there.  He won't be struttin' hisself 'round here no time soon, tell you that."

"Where did all this go down?"

"Down next to MacDill, you know, the air base.  Honky works there, some Army dude."

"Army dude?  You mean, he's in the Army?  He's a soldier?"

"Yeah, some sergeant, I hear.  So what?  He ain't got no bidnez here.  He needs to be over in Iraq or Afghan...Afghan...uh, that other place.  What's he doin' here, anyway, actin' all one percenter and s***?  He ain't none to me."

"Let me make sure I understand what went down.  You and three of your bros, out in the wee small, run into this soldier.  You ask him for money.  When he starts to give you some, you all beat the hell out of him and take his wallet and cellphone.  That pretty much it?"

"Yeah, man.  And now me an' Lerome is in the slam.  They tryin' to make us rat out the other two, but we holdin' tough.  You gotta come down an' get us out, man, afore they start waterboardin' us or some s***.  I mean, that's what you do ain't it?  Protect us black folks from the man?" 

"Okay, here's what I'm going to do.  You listening?  Listen real close, now."

"Yeah, 'Rev,' I be listenin'."

(Click)

Hey, everybody should have a dream.  This is one of mine.

Would You Rehire This Guy?

Imagine, if you will, that you are the owner of a major league baseball team.  It could happen.  Eleven years ago, your team had a winning percentage of .750.  Your manager at the time retired, so you hired a replacement.

Ten years later, your team's winning percentage is .250 and attendance has fallen off by half.  Your manager, burned out and needing a break, resigns to take a self-actualizing job with a concern unrelated to baseball.  You hire his replacement.

The replacement is on the job barely one season when he leaves for "family reasons."  You've just begun your search for a new manager when you get a call from the one who left your club two years ago.  He says he's refreshed, revitalized, and ready to come back to the bigs.

Will you hire him or laugh him off the phone?

Of course you wouldn't rehire someone who took your organization from top-tier to bottom-feeder...would you?  You'd think this was a no-brainer...wouldn't you?  Well, you would be wrong, jock strap-breath.

For all of the millennium's first decade, Bob Ashley was editor of Durham's main daily newspaper, The Herald-Sun.  When he first came aboard, he fired a fourth of the staff.  As a result, coverage fell off.  Between 2001 and 2010 the number of subscribers to both the weekday and Sunday editions dropped by 50 percent.  Ashley left the paper in 2010 to take a position with Preservation of Durham.

Not only did Ashley gut his paper's manpower, not only did he lose half of his subscribers, he also destroyed any reputation for journalistic objectivity and integrity his paper might have enjoyed by his egregious handling of the Duke lacrosse scandal.  Presented with the opportunity to simply report events as they unfolded, caution restraint and urge an inflamed community to let the justice system process play itself out, he instead spun the fraudulent rape claim of a drug-crazed stripper/hooker into a full-out assault on every buzz word in his liberal agenda.  He bought into the scam in toto not because of any evidence--there was none--but because it fit his world view.  Proof?  He didn't need any proof to know that Duke students are elitist, athletes feel entitled, males are sexist, and whites are racists.

His replacement lasted a year or so before taking another job somewhere else.  By now Ashley, apparently frustrated at not having a platform from which to spout his liberal drivel and believing the world deprived as a result, expressed an interest in reclaiming his old job as Herald-Sun editor.  And as insane as it seems given the destruction he wrought during his first term at the helm, he was rehired.

Now I know what you're thinking.  You're thinking, "Dave, what does running a newspaper have to do with managing a baseball team?  You're comparing apples with oranges."

Well, excuse me, but are they not both fruit?  Do they not both grow on trees, have seeds, produce juice, and are they not both protected by peels?

Business is business.  All businesses, whether sports franchises, newspapers, or whatever, have but one purpose--to make a profit.  When a business begins to lose money, there's a sickness.  When it continues to lose money, there's a fatality.

When the care of a patient on life support is given over to the quack whose malpractice is responsible for him being there, one ought not to be surprised if the plug somehow gets pulled.  Or maybe that's been the plan all along.

Not the Right Lesson to Learn

You just know his story was going to end badly, this waste of a human soul.  I won't say it was entirely his fault.  He did have some negative reinforcement and counterproductive enabling along the way.  But at the end of the day it was still his decision, still his own doing.

He attended Milwaukee Trade and Technical High School in the '90s.  Notice I said he "attended" Tech.  While he was on Tech's rolls as a student, he did not epitomize the accepted usage of the word.  No, this argument for post-partum abortion was not in school to study.  He was in school to play football.

And he was good.  Tech was a state powerhouse in all three major sports--basketball, baseball and football--and he was a star.  The problem was that because he was a star, he felt entitled.  He figured if he showed up to class often enough and put forth minimal, token effort, he should be given the grades he needed to maintain his eligibility.  After all, that was a hero's due.

Although he grudgingly submitted to the most trivial of requirements, he felt no obligation to respect those who imposed them upon him.  He referred to female staff as "skank 'ho's" and intimidated male teachers who even looked to him like they might not be inclined to kowtow to his sports worthiness.

Came the day when he ran up against a teacher who naively thought the purpose of high school was education, not preparation for a livelihood as a jock, and who, in the absence of any shred of academic accomplishment, any evidence of scholarship, subsequently failed him.  This flatlined a GPA that was already barely perceptible on the life support monitor, and he lost his eligibility to play.

Now I don't know who cried to the principal; the player, his coach, or both.  I do know, though, that all of a sudden the player's transcripts reflected his assignment as a monitor during the period of the class he had flunked, and that all school records were purged of the fact that he had even enrolled in that class to begin with.  His GPA was thus restored to the level required of eligibility, and he was back on the gridiron before you could say Vince Lombardi.

He eventually graduated high school and enrolled at University of Wisconsin.  He rushed for 1,681 yards as a running back in his junior year, after which he left school to enter the NFL draft.

He was drafted by the Minnesota Vikings with the 27th pick in 2001.  The following year he rushed for 1,296 yards and was selected to the Pro Bowl.  He was on five different teams over his ten-year career and finished up in 2010 with the Oakland Raiders.

Writing in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Don Walker reported that on April 18, 2012, 33-year-old Michael Bennett allegedly attempted to obtain a $200,000 loan using as collateral a bank statement which falsely showed a balance of approximately $9 million.  The account balance was actually zero and, in fact, had never had any money in it.  He was charged in a federal complaint on May 1 with wire fraud.

Sharing responsibility for the moral ambiguity possessed by Bennett that allowed him to imagine it was okay for him to perpetrate a fraud in this fashion has to be the principal who reinforced his belief that he was special, and that the rules applicable to the rest of us, the common folk, the hoi polloi, do not apply to him.

I knew the principal personally.  I can tell you with neither doubt nor hesitation that what she did for him she didn't do for him, or even for his coach.  She did it for her own selfish aggrandizement.  You see, the farther Tech's football team advanced in the state, the brighter the spotlight on her.

Do you suppose that if Bennett, whom she started down the road to perdition under the guise of salvaging his career, ends up convicted and in the slam she will go visit him?  I don't.  Trust me--she'll deny even remembering his name.