Questions for Men about Man-Making

Question 7. The Heros from Your Youth

In this question, I want to know about your heros. As an adolescent boy, who was one of your male film, music, sports or television heroes, and what did he teach you about manhood?

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STEVE S. - 52: This question got me thinking…no stewing really. I thought and thought about who my heroes were and if they were super or not.

As a precocious reader I delved into Alexander Dumas, Stephen Crane, Jack London and so forth beginning in my later grade school years. Before that is was the Cisco Kid, Sky King, the Lone Ranger, and Hop Along Cassidy on the neighbor’s B&W TV Saturday mornings.

My escape from a fairly crazy family life were real books and not the comics to which I never really bonded. If you traveled the world pursued by, or were pursuing, evil persons who betrayed fundamentally correct behavior in the classic values sense, I loved reading about it, and imagining it were me. It had to have guns, swords, ships, horses, torture, and the hope of overcoming doom.

In real life however I did not have a single example of “hero” growing up but took from many sources. My father the minister showed courage in the face of racial and theological strife, putting his job on the line several times. My godfather could charm any room he entered; big time woo factor. My drunken homeless uncle, the Pacific war hero with big time PTSD, taught me how to fight to win…mostly dirty fighting which I used throughout my early life and still gives me a sense of confidence. (Well, it didn’t go all that well I guess; five broken noses!) My high school English teacher taught me how to hear my inner voice and then organize and put onto paper that which was longing within me to be said.

Then there were the anti-heroes. My physically and mentally abusive scout master was a model for what not to be as a man. The rough neck ex-cons on the construction crews I worked my way through college on fit the anti-hero learning experiences as well. Who not to be and why.

So the many real life hero sources taught me the difference between reality and fiction. They taught me to strap on compassion, kindness, moral courage, hard work, laughter, expression, how to aim for the nuts and throat, flexibility and things I could truly be or do, as opposed to my fiction heroes whose lives I knew I could never live because they were not real.

STEVEN - 49: You know, I never had 'heroes'--men I saw as bigger than life or someone I wanted to emulate. I'm not sure why. Perhaps if they were not right in front of me where I could see 'em, touch em' and really believe they existed, then they really DIDN'T exist, at least enough for me to want to see them as a role model.

GRAY - 51: Heroes… Mickey Mantle, Bill Russell, John Havlicek, Rod Laver, John Newcombe. These types bring out different sides of me today. Mantle, Laver, and Havlicek were aw-shucks, let my game do the talking. Real gentlemen. Russell was an angry gentleman, and I took relief in that. Newcombe was as well, but he was dashing, which meant he got the girls.

STEVE - 45: No question, my hero growing up was Lou Gehrig, Hall of Fame 1st baseman for the New York Yankees. I was a baseball fan, no doubt, and read all the books I could find about Lou. And as corny as the movie was, the Lou Gehrig Story is still one of my favorite movies. I suppose it was his strength of character that I admired the most. He was a valued role model - leading by example both on and off the field. A man of integrity and humility as well.

STEVE S. - 53: Col. Jack Young wasn't one of those film, music, sports or television heroes, he was bigger than that, a real life hero for me. His history was that he had been a seventeen year old Captain of Flying Fortresses in WWII and was a member of our church in Kansas. He was with the Air Force flying B-52s for SAC when I met him. He taught me my first guitar cords and though he never succeeded, he shopped for a Martin guitar for me in pawn shops when he was flying all across America. He was a soft-spoken Southerner who was a gentle-man through and through. He was a crack shot when hunting, and rumored to wear his old leather helmet when cruising figure eights over the Artic Circle while waiting to drop nuclear bombs on Russia. One of his flying pals, Col. Lockee, told me he could tap his wingtip to yours just for the fun of it when doing those tedious circles above the north pole.

A year after my dad died, that would be 1968, I got word he was shot down over Hanoi flying one of his men's last mission. He always did that. Fly his own sorties, then fly the last one for the guy going home on rotation. He was a patriot, just like me...with one exception. He was a selfless warrior in harm's way, and I was a war protester. His death still haunts me, as do the deaths of seven of my classmates, and those innumerable others wounded in Viet Nam. Heroes? Yeah. Know what I mean?

DWAYNE - 22: I received various messages from the media which molded my views on manhood. Shows like the A Team and Hunter and other action shows like Miami vice, gave me bits and pieces that men should play heroic roles and be dominant either negatively or positively. I observed the roles that both genders played in society. Women were usually employed with clerical responsibilities or human services. Men were usually doing something that required physical strength and courage. This sort of ingrained into my mind the reality that men were physically dominant in terms of endurance and strength.

CHARLEY - 49: At an early age I realized I was going to have a hostile relationship with my father, a sarcastic, "mean drunk." I was angry, of course, and unconsciously looked for ways to undermine "his world". So I had a non-traditional search for heroes.

My theme was: be different. For example, if we played cowboys and Indians, I would be the Indian out to destroy Western (dad's) civilization. If we played the Crusades (which, oddly, we did) I was the Saracen. I read to learn about being these "enemies." When we played World War II, I wanted to be the Japanese--despite (or maybe because of) the fact that my father had been a Marine on a Pacific submarine! When we bought models, I bought a Japanese Zero and the battleship Yamamoto.

I particularly liked Tarzan, who, to this day, holds dangerous sway over a large part of my reptilian brain. I wanted to live with the animals, the heck with all this schooling and Catholicism and pressure to become a dentist.

When the hippie movement came along with its panoply of new rebels to imitate, I bought my ticket out of Western Civilization by growing my hair long. Returning from freshman year at college, my dad refused to let me in the house until I got a haircut. I won! I showed him that a "little thing," a mere trapping of civilization, a quirk of fashion, could force the truth--that he cared about "appearances" more than his son. At least that was my interpretation back then.

LEWIE - 70: I was a product of the great depression- I was born in 1931, the first born to a very young (age 22) married couple. My dad had 2 and 3 jobs to support the family so in essence I had a missing father - and many nagging females including a widowed grandmother, many aunts and female cousins.

I developed a love for the movies-Saturday matinees that only cost 9 cents. My hero was Tyrone Power- he portrayed men strong men in movies like Jesse James, Blood and Sand, Mark of Zorro, The Black Swan etc. etc. It gave me someone to look up to, but I certainly craved THE CARE AND CONCERN of a warm and real male figure.

Even as an adult I was a fan of Tyrone Power and I grieved when he passed in 1959.

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