Heroes in America

Peter H. Gibbon

Biography

Dr. Peter Gibbon is the author of A Call to Heroism: Renewing America's Vision of Greatness published by Atlantic Monthly Press in 2002 and in paperback in 2003. In May 2003 he was a speaker at the White House Forum on History, Civics and Service Education.

He has published articles in Newsweek, The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, The Chicago Tribune, The Baltimore Sun, The Philadelphia Inquirer, and The Washington Post as well as in a variety of professional journals, such as Teachers College Record and The History Teacher. He has appeared on television and radio programs, including the Diane Rehm Show, Fox News, Here and Now, On Point, and the David Brudnoy Show.

Dr. Gibbon has traveled around the country talking to general audiences and to middle and high school students about heroism. In assemblies and individual literature and history classes, he has talked to students in public, private, and parochial schools in twenty states over the last several years.

He is currently a Senior Research Fellow at Boston University's School of Education. He was for eight years a Research Associate at Harvard University's School of Education and for thirty years a teacher and administrator. He has taught ancient and medieval history, European history, anthropology, American history and a variety of electives in American, English and European literature. He is the former headmaster of Hackley School in Tarrytown, New York. He is a graduate of Harvard College and has a Ph.D. from Columbia University Teachers College.
Human beings are deeply divided, eternally torn between apathy and activity, between nihilism and belief. In this short life, we wage a daily battle between a higher and a lower self. The hero stands for our higher self. To get through life and permit the higher self to prevail we depend on public models of excellence, bravery, and goodness. During the last forty years in America, such models have been in short supply.

Except among politicians and Madison Avenue advertising firms, the word hero has been out of fashion since the late 1960s as a term to describe past or present public figures. We have been reluctant to use it this way, doubtful as to any one person can hold up under the burden of such as word. After the September 11 terrorist attacks, hero was used to describe the firefighters and police offers who picked their way through the rubble, passengers who thwarted terrorists on a hijacked airplane, and soldiers who left on planes and ships. In difficult times, we turn to the word hero to express our deepest sorrow, our highest aspiration, and our most profound admiration.

At the start of the twenty-first century, America was forced to question some of the attitudes of an antiheroic age: irony, cynicism, preoccupation with celebrities and sex, disdain for political leaders, and indifference to soldiers. "Times of terror are times of heroism, " said Ralph Waldo Emerson. America's new war has reminded us of one kind of heroism, the brave deed, and of one kind of hero, the rescuer. My hope is that it will also encourage us to become more interested in past and present public heroes and that it will revive the qualities of admiration, gratitude, and awe too long absent from our culture.

In America today, we have come to define the person by the flaw: Thomas Jefferson is the president with the slave mistress, Einstein the scientist who mistreated his wife, Mozart the careless genius who liked to talk dirty. These definitions lodge in our minds-especially if they relate to sex-and become the first and sometimes the only thing we remember. As a society, we need to explore a more subtle, complex definition of the word hero, suitable for an information age, one that acknowledges weaknesses as well as strengths, failures as well as successes-but, at the same time, one that does not set the bar too low.

The definition of hero remains subjective. What is extraordinary can be debated. Courage is in the eye of the beholder. Greatness of soul is elusive. Inevitably there will be debates over how many and what kinds of flaws a person can have and still be considered heroic.We are fearful that heroes might be illusory, falsely elevated by early death or good spin doctors or the vagaries of history. The twentieth century taught us well that leaders once thought heroes can turn out to be tyrants. And the tacit assumption that a hero is supposed to be perfect has made many Americans turn away from the word-and the concept-altogether. The contemporary preference for words like role model and mentor and the shift from the recognition of national to local heroes are part of the transformation of the word hero that occurred in the second half of the twentieth century.

There is something appealing about a society that admires a range of accomplishments, that celebrates as many people as possible, that looks beyond statues of generals on horseback for its heroes. Making hero more democratic, however, can be carried to an extreme. It can strip the word of all sense of the extraordinary. It can lead to an ignorance of history, a repudiation of genius, and an extreme egalitarianism disdainful of high culture and unappreciative of excellence.

We need role models and mentors and local heroes, but by limiting our heroes to people we know, we restrict our aspirations. Public heroes-or imperfect people of extraordinary achievement, courage and greatness of soul whose reach is wider than our own-teach us to push beyond ourselves and our neighborhoods in search of models of excellence. They enlarge our imagination, teach us to think big, and expand our sense of the possible.

-Peter H. Gibbon

A Call to Heroism Renewing America's Vision of Greatness
By Peter H. Gibbon
Foreword by Peter J. Gomes
Christian Science Monitor—Best Books 2002

Description:

Now is a time of rejuvenated interest in heroes in America. In the past months we have come to a new appreciation of the heroes of our past—and a greater recognition of the heroic acts of those we have lost. But what are we to look for in heroes who walk among us today? And what are we to expect of our heroes as we prepare for the trials of an uncertain future?

In A Call to Heroism, Peter H. Gibbon argues that heroic ideals are fundamental to the enterprise of American liberty and to the very fabric of our nation's culture. In tracing the evolution of our collective vision of greatness from the age of our founders to today's celebrity-obsessed media age, he concludes that although our reverence for these ideals may have eroded along the way, we now have a unique opportunity to forge a new understanding of what it means to be a hero, one that will fortify the next generation of American leaders as we engage the challenges that lie ahead.

Gibbon believes that our multicultural society of dreamers and achievers can be brought together through cherishing the exemplary individuals of our history—men and women who have sacrificed for causes greater than themselves. These include not only traditional civic heroes—statesmen and warriors like George Washington—but also heroes of ideas and conscience: scientists and educators like Thomas Edison and Horace Mann, and religious leaders and civil rights activists like Martin Luther King Jr. and Lucretia Mott.

As he surveys the lives, struggles, and accomplishments of these and other great individuals, he also contemplates the meanings of seven monuments and artworks dedicated to heroes, including the Hall of Fame for Great Americans, Jean-Antoine Houdon's bust of Benjamin Franklin, and Mount Rushmore, to examine what these memorials say about the America of their time—and what they meanfor us today.

Full of insight and inspiration, A Call to Heroism is a provocative look at a timeless subject that has never been more important.
Praise

"The heroes of today have different faces, and the word itself has a more precise meaning for all of us. Dr. Peter Gibbon's book could not be more timely as we look around to identify those in our lives who are making up a new generation of heroes. It is my hope that Dr. Gibbon's stirring and thought provoking book will lead his readers to explore the wonders of heroism and the many different ways that we may be inspired or educated by individuals who have left us with valuable personal legacies."—George E. Pataki, Governor of New York

"This book is a delightful Grand Tour, taking us from war to sports to great literature. You will enjoy it."—Jay Mathews, Education reporter for The Washington Post

"Fascinating and inspiring. . . . Gibbon's book emphasizes the importance of guiding young people to more realistic definitions of hero. . . . Heroes, Gibbon says, 'instruct us in greatnes ... [and] remind us of our better selves.' Those reminders are a gift. So is Gibbon's book. By encouraging a reexamination of the qualities 21st-century Americans emphasize, he quietly shows the rewards of recognizing individuals who stand for our higher self."—Marilyn Gardner, The Christian Science Monitor

"Engaging and provocative. Peter Gibbon's book should be lively fare for classrooms and board rooms throughout the country."—Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., historian and author of A Life in the 20th Century

"[A] compelling book that tells of an important and civic moral and psychological matter with great clarity and thoughtfulness."—Robert Coles, author of Lives of Moral Leadership

"This fine book is the perfect antidote to the recent tendency to dwell on the failings of exemplary men and women."—Mary Ann Glendon, author of A World Made New: Eleanor Roosevelt and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights

"With the nation yearning powerfully for inspiration and leadership, A Call to Heroism could hardly be more timely."—Michael Medved, Film Critic and Nationally Syndicated Radio Host

"Gibbon [reminds] us that real heroes are not celebrities but those whose lives are devoted to the highest ideals of society."—Edward O. Wilson, University Research Professor at Harvard

"Gibbon shows . . . we can rise simultaneously to the greatness of which we are capable and the humility that befits us."—Edwin Delattre, Professor of Philosophy and Education, Boston University

"[A] map for parents, teachers and the young, themselves, to rediscover personal greatness . . . its potential in each of us."—Kevin Ryan, Founder and Emeritus Director of the Boston University Center for the Advancement of Ethics and Character

"Peter Gibbon reminds us why we need heroes. . . . They lift our sights and inspire us to be and do better."—Art Carey, columnist, The Philadelphia Inquirer

“Very thought-provoking. . . . A concise history of the hero in America and a realistic formula for determining who deserves the accolade. . . . A worthy endeavor.”—Mark F. Lewis, The Tampa Tribune

“Offers a series of insights on the traits of a hero, their place in culture, and individuals who attained this status. . . . Conveys Gibbon’s strong sense of civic duty and earnest desire for a return to values he sees as absent from the country’s collective psyche. His notions are admirable.”—Stephen Millin, Rocky Mountain News

“Rich with insight. . . . [Gibbon’s] ultimate focus is education: how to teach youth to respect heroes.”—Tom O’Brien, America


Heroic Quotations


"We can all learn from the islands of extraordinariness in our midst." - Howard Gardner

"We cannot all be great, but we can always attach ourselves to something great. " - Harry Emerson Fosdick

"Let knowledge grow from more to more, but more of reverence in us dwell. - Alfred Lord Tennyson

"Nature never intended man to be a low, groveling creature. From the moment of his birth, she implants in him an inextinguishable desire for the noble and the good." - Longinus

"I doubt that human beings can live without some expanded ideal of behavior, some palpable image of the spaciousness of man." - Robert Penn Warren

"The hero cannot be common, nor the common the heroic." - Ralph Waldo Emerson

"The true test of a great man - that at least, which must secure his place among the highest order of great men - is, his having been in advance of his age. " - Seneca

"In picking out from history our heroes each one of us may best fortify and inspire what creative energy may lie in the soul. This is the best justification of hero worship. " - William James

"The faculty of love, of admiration, is to be regarded as the sign and measure of high souls. Ridicule, on the other hand, is a small faculty. " - Thomas Carlyle

"... there resides in us the motivating and civilizing force of the human spirit. It gives us the ability to think courageous thoughts, do courageous deeds, and give courageous sustenance to our fellows. I predict that it will one day be the subject of scientific research and validating experience." - Sherwin Nuland

"The world is forwarded by having its attention fixed on the best things " - Matthew Arnold

"It may be a reflection of our times that we cannot see unvarnished heroism without noticing the baseness that often lies just below the surface. " - Zachary Karbell

"In generous ages, the bad is forgotten, the good is remembered. . . ungenerous ages leave us malicious libels..."- James Froude

"Who had made the nation great? Not its heroes but its households." -Sarah Hale