Heroes (priests, moral, reject, Earth, Kingdom)

[t3gah]

Originally Posted by SoulTYPE01

In a sense, Rex is a hero huajiro.

I always get confused between hero's and giro's.

but I'll vote for fire fighters

[huajiro]

Originally Posted by jewscout

I sorta like Harry Truman...I think some of the greatest leaders are those that don't want to be leaders.

Please explain why you think he is a hero

[jewscout]

Originally Posted by huajiro

Please explain why you think he is a hero

He's someone who came from nothing, who had no desire to be placed in the position of Vice President...which ultimately led to him becoming president. He also was an early fighter for civil rights.
He was pushed into the position of president and he proved to be a very capable leader.

[huajiro]

I will read up on him...thnx Jewscout.

[huajiro]

My new hero:

Vivien Thomas (1910-1985)

Vivien T. Thomas was born in New Iberia, Louisiana in 1910, the son of a carpenter. His family moved to Nashville, where Vivien graduated with honors from Pearl High School. Later in 1929 he was preparing for college and medical school when his savings for tuition disappeared following the October stock market crash. With no means for education, he took a job as a laboratory technician at Vanderbilt University's medical school, working for Dr. Alfred Blalock.

Thomas still hoped to save tuition money to earn his own medical degree, but the Great Depression worsened and the research with Blalock grew. Soon Thomas was working sixteen hours a day in the laboratory, performing operations that would advance Blalock's studies of high blood
pressure and traumatic shock. For his work, Thomas invented a heavy spring device that could apply varying levels of pressure. Blalock and Thomas' work at Vanderbilt created a new understanding of shock, showing that shock was linked to a loss of fluid and blood volume.

When Blalock became chief surgeon at Johns Hopkins University's medical school in 1941, he insisted that Vivien Thomas be hired to join his team there. At Johns Hopkins, Thomas and Blalock pioneered the field of heart surgery with a procedure to alleviate a congenital heart defect, the Tetralogy of Fallot ("blue baby syndrome"). Sufferers faced brutally short life expectancies. Working with cardiologist Helen Taussig, Blalock and Thomas developed an operation that would deliver more oxygen to the blood and relieve the constriction caused by the heart defect. Thomas tested the procedure -- a refinement of one that they had created in laboratory dogs -- on animals to make sure it would work. In 1944, with Thomas advising Blalock, the first "blue baby" operation was successfully performed on 15-month-old Eileen Saxon.

Thomas was a key partner in hundreds of "blue baby" operations, performing pre- and post-operation procedures on patients as well as advising in the operating room. At the same time, he continued to manage Blalock's ongoing laboratory research.
As head of the Hopkins surgical research laboratory, Thomas also taught a generation of surgeons and lab technicians. The residents and research fellows who worked with Thomas testified to his unique abilities and his dedication.

One thing that is incredible about Mr. Thomas is that he was incredibly gifted, and incredibly limited because of the time, he was not bitter. He knew himself he could be a great doctor, he wanted to study medicine formally, but the bank where he had saved his money for school for years went under, leaving him with nothing. After that, Dr. Alfred Blalock discovered his talents when he worked for him. Dr. Blalock allowed him to do work for him, which taught him a great deal about medicine. The problem is that because Mr. Thomas was African American, he was somewhat limited. Dr. Blalock used this to his advantage. He never helped Mr. Thomas study and obtain his own doctorate, because Mr. Thomas did all of the work that would make Dr. Blalock famous.
Dr. Thomas (I call him Dr. because he deserves it) never received credit from the press for his work until after Dr. Blalock's death.

It was calculated that some 1,750,000 lives were saved because of Dr. Thomas' work.

[huajiro]

More heroes....the women of Rosenstrasse

Day and night for a week in early 1943, hundreds of unarmed German women did something that was unheard of in Nazi Germany. They stood toe-to-toe with machine gun-wielding Gestapo agents and demanded the release of their Jewish husbands from Adolph Hitler’s murderous grip.

The full story is here:

http://www.research.fsu.edu/research...es/hitler.html

[Faust]

Originally Posted by huahiro

I am obsessed with heroes....I love to hear stories about people in history who did great deeds.....selfless acts.....etc. I know that history is not always true, but I love hearing it all!!!

I hate to cast a shadow on this thread but I would like to explore another side of this issue.
Just as we tend to dehumanize our opposition by demonizing them, we can also dehumanize our own by elevating them to the status of hero.
I see this happening concerning our recent involvement in Iraq.
When we use the term hero to talk of all of our service people, we elevate them above our normal standards. Heros are meant to sacrifice for all of us normal human beings. By elevating them above the level of a mere human, we expect them to sacrifice for us. Thats their job. Thats what heros do. We can use this term to sooth our conscience about the sacrifice that others are making in this war without even realizing it.
Sometimes we loose sight of the fact that our heros are the kid from next door who just wanted to be able to go to college.
I know this is not what you all are talking about here but I found it an opportune time to submit this observation.
Faust.

[huajiro]

Originally Posted by Faust

I hate to cast a shadow on this thread but I would like to explore another side of this issue.
Just as we tend to dehumanize our opposition by demonizing them, we can also dehumanize our own by elevating them to the status of hero.
I see this happening concerning our recent involvement in Iraq.
When we use the term hero to talk of all of our service people, we elevate them above our normal standards. Heros are meant to sacrifice for all of us normal human beings. By elevating them above the level of a mere human, we expect them to sacrifice for us. Thats their job. Thats what heros do. We can use this term to sooth our conscience about the sacrifice that others are making in this war without even realizing it.
Sometimes we loose sight of the fact that our heros are the kid from next door who just wanted to be able to go to college.
I know this is not what you all are talking about here but I found it an opportune time to submit this observation.
Faust.

My definition of a "hero" is someone who goes above and beyond what others would do for others, with no expectations of glory, risking even their own lives if needed.

[Faust]

Originally Posted by huajiro

My definition of a "hero" is someone who goes above and beyond what others would do for others, with no expectations of glory, risking even their own lives if needed.

And that is an excellent definition.
Faust.

[huajiro]

I have a new hero, Maj Karl Plagge:


'Nazi who saved Jews' honored in Israel
By Associated Press April 12, 2005 A German military officer who became known as the "Nazi who saved Jews" was honored Monday by Yad Vashem for rescuing hundreds of Jews from death camps during World War II.

Maj. Karl Plagge was named "Righteous Among the Nations" in an emotional posthumous ceremony in Jerusalem. The honor is reserved for non-Jews who risked their lives to save Jews during the Holocaust.

Plagge served as an Nazi officer in Lithuania from 1941-1944, where he was in charge of a factory that employed hundreds of Jews. According to Yad Vashem, Plagge employed unqualified people to save them from deportation, and warned his workers in June 1944 that German troops were approaching and they would be handed over to the Nazis. The warning enabled some 200 people to escape and survive.

"The experience of human-made horror is frequently accompanied by hope," said Johann-Dietrich Worner, president of the Technical University of Darmstadt. "Karl Plagge and similar examples prove that even in the darkness of misdeeds there exists the light of hope, of humanity in inhuman situations."

Worner accepted the honor on behalf of Plagge, who was a graduate of the university. Plagge, who died in 1957, has no surviving relatives.

During the ceremony, Dr. Simon Malkes thanked Plagge for saving his life and the lives of many other Jews. Later, the participants congregated outdoors in the Garden of the Righteous Among Nations, where Plagge's name was unveiled on a wall.

The ceremony capped a six-year odyssey by Michael Good, an American physician from Connecticut whose mother was among those rescued by Plagge.

Good began searching for Plagge in 1999 in an effort to thank his family - only to learn that Plagge and his wife had no children. The effort grew into a major project that included Good's recently published book, "The Search for Major Plagge: The Nazi Who Saved Jews," and a Web site, www.searchformajorplagge.com

Good's research included documents dating to World War II and its aftermath, as well as hundreds of e-mails a week from survivors and their children of the military vehicle repair camp run by Plagge in Vilnius.

Good's mother, Pearl, unveiled Plagge's name on the memorial wall during Monday's ceremony, Yad Vashem said.

http://isurvived.org/Rightheous_Fold...MajGerman.html

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/4432075.stm