Heroes. We all have our own idea of what a hero is.

John Wayne was a hero, always riding up in the nick of time to save the day.

Superman was a hero, bending steel with his bare hands, leaping buildings with a single bound and fighting for truth, justice and the American way.

John McClane is a hero. That’s the character Bruce Willis plays in the “Die Hard” movies. With guns, his fists and his wits, he always make the bad guys pay in the end.

These, of course, are only fictional heroes, comic book characters or figments of some writer’s imagination.

Real heroes are more complex, sometimes harder to spot.

As far as many Americans are concerned, myself included, every man and woman in the U.S. armed forces is a hero, no matter whether they serve in this country or abroad.

Our police and firefighters are heroes, as well. They enforce our laws and protect our lives and property.

Doctors and nurses are heroes. They offer healing and comfort when our bodies betray us.

Men and women of the clergy are heroes. They offer us hope when that commodity seems in short supply. They offer us strength in our greatest times of weakness. They offer us peace when our souls are at war.

Teachers are heroes. For far less money than they could make in another profession, they educate and inspire, often in the face of sullen defiance on the part of their students.

Mothers are heroes. They go through the travails of pregnancy and the pain of childbirth, then spend the rest of their lives dedicating themselves to us.

Fathers are heroes. They play catch with us, take us fishing and teach us many valuable life lessons. They teach us, girls and boys alike, what it means to be a man.

In Pittsburgh, the Carnegie Hero Fund annually honors people for their heroism. Nineteen medals were handed out Friday, including three to Oklahomans.

Dale Hickman of Wewoka and Malcolm Morgan of Tulsa were honored for rescuing a 23-year-old man from a burning car in Seminole in 2006. Tommy Barbee of Chandler helped save a 34-year-old man overcome by smoke in a burning Tulsa apartment in 2006. Oklahoma, incidentally, was one of only three states with three Carnegie winners.

Sometimes heroism is not heralded and is, in fact, not widely recognized.

I know a lady whose life has been anything but easy recently. A little more than a year ago she lost her husband of 29 years, a man with whom she did everything.

Since then she has been diagnosed with cancer, suffering through treatment that has robbed her of her hair and her strength.

Just last week she lost her father.

Through it all she keeps plugging away, coming to work every day with a smile on her face and a spring in her step. She has every right in the world to sit at home and feel sorry for herself, but she chooses not to.

She’s not alone. I know a man whose own fight with cancer has dragged on for months, but he always greets everyone with a smile, a firm handshake and a positive word.

These are just two of millions who battle heartbreak and debilitating illness on a daily basis, yet greet each new challenge with the determination to live life, not merely survive it.

These are not storybook heroes, not the kind of heroes you read about in the newspaper or hear about on television, but they are heroes nonetheless.



Mullin is senior writer of the News & Eagle.