Stone Mountain: The real heroes are all around 
if you look

By Bill York

My only brother is my No. 1 hero. Johnny would have been 21 years old in January when he was wounded on D-Day and killed six months later on Dec. 19, 1944, in the Battle of the Bulge, 4,000 miles away on the allied front.

As kids on the farm in Indiana I always knew Johnny would become a paratrooper because he was constantly jumping out of somewhere: the apple trees, the hay maw, the roof of the barn.

He was fascinated with jumping from the highest limb of the oak tree into the creek below. I think about him a lot, and especially around Veterans Day.

Today, when I still see heroes departing the airport for the Middle East, I think of Johnny.

I walk through the shopping malls and see military personnel having a bite.

I walk over and extend my hand and thank them for what they are doing and tell them that I was doing the same thing in the Mediterranean back in World War II.

I notice their looks of appreciation. We become kindred spirits. When standing in line, waiting for my order, I sometime pay for their lunch.

I know a man who has macular degeneration. You can’t tell that six decades ago the man was flying fighter aircraft into combat in the Pacific. He is one of my heroes.

True heroes are found not on golf courses or baseball diamonds, or race tracks or in Hollywood, but in nursing homes and veterans’ hospitals or streaming through airport concourses on their way to or from zones of peril.

Heroes wear firefighter and police gear. Those nurses who tended to the wounded on D-Day are heroes. Rosie the Riveter was my hero.

Heroes are parents who dutifully nurture their kids through troubled times. Heroes are those teachers who endure the restrictions of a dysfunctional system. Heroes are the FBI. Heroes are border patrol.

I have never seen a hero in a football locker. Heroes are those rare people worthy of emulation.

When finding military medals at a flea market, I worry about what will happen to my brother’s medals after I’m gone.

Upon visiting the museum of the 101st Airborne at Fort Campbell, Ky., I designed a shadow box, constructed from eternal wood, and placed my brother’s Purple Hearts, Bronze Stars, his dog tags, his paratrooper insignia pins, a letter from Franklin Roosevelt, and offered it to the curator at the Don F. Pratt Museum on base at Fort Campbell.

My gesture was accepted. Now, my No. 1 hero is featured in the Battle of the Bulge Pavilion at the museum.

True heroes are born, not created by publicity agents or promotional stunts. Hug a real hero today. Our future is dependent on them.

Bill York of Stone Mountain is a novelist, freelance writer and retired furrier.