by Brad Meltzer
But Roberto Clemente isn’t a hero because the plane went down.
He’s a hero because of why he got on board. *
If you have a chance to accomplish something that will make things better for people coming behind you and you don’t do that, you are wasting your time on this Earth.
—Roberto Clemente
He can run and throw—and we think he can hit.
—Draft report on Roberto Clemente for the Pittsburgh Pirates
—DAREDEVIL—
amelia earhart
Record breaker. High-flying pilot.
A pioneer in aviation and the first female to cross the Atlantic, Amelia Earhart broke many flight records. She died while trying to become the first person to fly around the world at the equator. Her plane has still never been found.
She worked as a truck driver, stenographer, and photographer. Just to save enough for the flying lessons.
Six months after she learned to fly, she put away enough for a bright yellow, used biplane called Canary.
The following year, she broke her first record, reaching an altitude of fourteen thousand feet, the highest recorded at that time by a woman.
She wasn’t a natural. She wasn’t the best pilot.
She had to work at it.
But within her short lifetime she showed the world that the greatest flight we’ll ever take is the one no one has tried before. *
Please know I am quite aware of the hazards…. I want to do it because I want to do it. Women must try to do things as men have tried. When they fail their failure must be but a challenge to others.
—Amelia Earhart
Never interrupt someone doing what you said couldn’t be done.
—Amelia Earhart
—ACTIVIST—
nelson mandela
President of South Africa, 1994 to 1999.
Under South African apartheid—the social and political policy of racial repression—activist Nelson Mandela was sent to prison for twenty-seven years. After his release, he negotiated the end of legal racial segregation in the country—and in 1994 became South Africa’s president in the country’s first free election.
Nelson Mandela was sent to work in the quarry.
Sent there so his will would be broken.
But deep in the mine, in what was supposed to be a latrine, he and the other prisoners created a school.
There the inmates became teachers of history and students of law, self-educated scholars preparing apartheid’s end.
The men knew they could be punished for speaking.
They knew they could be punished for organizing.
Yet Mandela was arranging lectures on economics and politics, Sophocles and Shakespeare, readying the activists around him for the coming revolution.
In life, there are many prisons.
But even in the darkest ones, there are always possibilities. *
In English, Nelson Mandela’s given name, Rolihlahla, literally means “troublemaker.”
—SCIENTIST—
norman borlaug
Father of the Green Revolution.
Norman Borlaug’s brilliant mind allowed him to develop high-yielding, disease-resistant crops. He could have made millions. Instead, he devoted his life to saving others.
The lab produced camouflage, malaria repellents, and saltwater-proof glues for soldiers fighting in the South Pacific.
But after the war, Norman decided that he should use science for something other than fighting.
And so came the true birth of the Green Movement.
Norman Borlaug moved to Mexico and began doing manual labor in the wheat fields.
Working beside the farmers, he figured out how to grow more food.
Six times more.
He saved one million people from starvation in Mexico.
When he moved his family to India, he multiplied the region’s grain output by fourfold and again saved a million lives.
By the time Norman came home, having worked on farms all over China and Africa, he had prevented one billion men, women, and children from dying of starvation—saving more people than anyone in human history. *
You can’t build a peaceful world on empty stomachs and human misery.
—Norman Borlaug
—LEADER—
martin luther king jr.
Clergyman. Civil rights activist. Nobel Peace Prize winner.
At a time when it would’ve been so easy to use his fists, King embraced the path of peace—and in doing so, showed its true power. In his battle against hatred and racism, he died for his ideals. But most important, he lived for them.
The speech wasn’t finished until 3:30 a.m. that morning.
Yet on August 28, 1963, he was ready to take the podium.
FBI agents were stationed beside the PA system on the Washington Mall, ready to pull the plug at a moment’s notice in case he said something incendiary.
And then, halfway through his text, Dr. King looked up from the printed page.
His written draft didn’t include the words “I have a dream.”
But it was when the young reverend stopped reading and started speaking that everyone heard.
No plug was pulled.
No dog attacked.
No fire hose was needed to control the crowd.
And though the president and Congress feared that a protest march would prevent the passage of civil rights legislation, they could have not been more wrong.
Nothing can stop a dream. *
The hottest place in Hell is reserved for those who remain neutral in times of great moral conflict.
—Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
—MIRACLE WORKER—
anne sullivan
Teacher.
Helen Keller was deaf and blind from the age of one. With the help of her teacher Anne Sullivan, Helen became a prolific writer and activist.
No one believed that the deaf and blind girl would amount to anything. She was helpless.
At six years old, she couldn’t speak, talk, or even eat with a fork.
But one teacher, who was nearly blind herself, had the patience to “finger-write” words into Helen’s tiny hand.
Helen Keller was admitted to Radcliffe College, but the dean convinced her not to attend. Though the school had accepted her, he thought that college would be too much for her. But a year later, Helen was determined to try.
Since most of Helen’s books couldn’t be converted into Braille, Anne Sullivan spent five hours a day spelling onto Helen’s hand the letters, the words, the sentences of the texts.
Straining to read the texts caused Anne’s already-poor eyesight to deteriorate greatly. Anne’s doctor warned—if she didn’t stop reading to Helen, she’d risk going blind herself.
Anne kept on reading.
Helen Keller wrote her first book when she was just twenty-two years old. It was the first of fourteen books she would write.
And of course, thanks to her teacher, Anne Sullivan, Helen graduated from Radcliffe.
Cum laude. *
Although the world is full of suffering, it is also full of the overcoming of it.
—Helen Keller
—MUSICIAN—
john lennon
Legendary singer-songwriter. Peace activist.
One of the founders of the Beatles, John Lennon created some of the world’s most popular and complex songs. But his greatest impact wasn’t on the pop charts. It was in his wartime songs: stubborn anthems advocating peace in Vietnam at a time when it would’ve been so much easier for him to stay quiet.
When John Lennon’s Aunt Mimi told him music wasn’t a job, he just kept playing on her porch.
When all he had was a cheap harmonica and a bus ticket, he played the entire way to Scotland.
And when that great moment came, when he had everyone listening, John Lennon led by example, singing about peace and redefining what a rock star can shout about.
By the time J. Edgar Hoover was tapping his p
hone and having him followed, John knew that there was only one way to deal with naysayers.
You just have to keep singing your song. *
The guitar’s all very well, John, but you’ll never make a living out of it.
—John Lennon’s Aunt Mimi
—HUMANITARIAN—
harriet tubman
Abolitionist. Union spy.
Selflessly leading southern slaves to freedom via the Underground Railroad, runaway slave Harriet Tubman became reverently known as “the Moses of her people.” As she herself once stated, she “never lost a single passenger.”
When Harriet Tubman escaped to the North, she was truly free.
Never again would she have to hold her breath in hidden rooms.
Never again would she have to lie perfectly still under false floors.
Never again would she have to dig holes to hide in swamps or sweet potato fields.
But she knew she had to go back.
In a time when there was big money to be made by catching runaway slaves, she risked her own capture over nineteen more trips, hiding by day, traveling by night, leading over three hundred people to their freedom.
It wasn’t safe.
But it was right. *
Every great dream begins with a dreamer.
—Harriet Tubman
—RISK TAKER—
harry houdini
Magician. Escapologist. Stunt artist.
Harry Houdini was the world’s most famous and accomplished escape artist. When he was doing what he loved, nothing could hold him.
Though he knew it was honest work, the Weiss boy wanted out of the factory.
He tried to run away and join the circus, but after his father died, it fell on Ehrich to take care of his family.
Ten hours of cutting neckties…or ten hours sweeping in a carnival?
In the boardinghouse, they told him to take the work that’s dependable.
Take the work that feeds your family.
Ehrich, however, had a vision.
He knew he walked a different path.
Flanked by bearded ladies and snake charmers, “the Great Houdini” stepped into the sideshow.
For almost a decade, he struggled to feed himself, his mother, his sister.
And then what began in a tent made its way to a theater.
Harry Houdini became the highest-paid vaudeville performer of his time, forever doing what he loved rather than what was safe. *
My chief task has been to conquer fear.
—Harry Houdini
—TRAILBLAZER—
jackie robinson
Professional baseball player. Hall of Famer.
At a time when major league baseball was played only by whites, Jackie Robinson forever changed American sports by crossing baseball’s sixty-year color line and becoming the first African American to play in the major leagues instead of the Negro leagues. He stole home nineteen times and was the National League Most Valuable Player in 1949, when he led in hitting (.342) and steals (37). With Robinson on their team, the Dodgers won six pennants in his ten seasons. He risked his life to do it.
Pitchers threw fastballs at his head.
Runners slid at him with their cleats.
Catchers spit on his shoes.
But it was from the stands that the hate letters and death threats came.
As a college student, Jackie had a reputation for fighting.
But not in the big leagues. There he practiced self-control.
Even when they warned that if he kept playing, they’d kidnap his son.
Even when his family waited by the radio, listening for gunshots.
Jackie kept silent, speaking loud with no words at all. *
How you played in yesterday’s game is all that counts.
—Jackie Robinson
—THINKER—
albert einstein
The greatest scientist of his time.
Albert Einstein created the theory of relativity, won the Nobel Prize in Physics, and forever altered our understanding of the universe.
He didn’t speak until he was three years old.
He was the worst-behaved kid in class.
When he was sick and bedridden in grade school, his father showed him a simple compass.
The compass fascinated the boy.
The needle’s constant northern swing, guided by what seemed like an invisible force, convinced Einstein that there was “something behind things, something deeply hidden.”
No one agreed.
One teacher called him a foolish dreamer and asked him to drop out.
But Einstein never stopped dreaming.
As an adult, he scribbled down his ideas and hid them in a desk drawer when his supervisors passed.
He went against conventional wisdom.
He questioned the status quo.
His idea? Everything is full of energy.
His conclusion? E = mc2.
The theory of relativity didn’t just change the world.
It showed us the universe. *
The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing. One cannot help but be in awe when he contemplates the mysteries of eternity, of life, of the marvelous structure of reality. It is enough if one tries merely to comprehend a little of this mystery every day. Never lose a holy curiosity.
—Albert Einstein
—OLYMPIAN—
jesse owens
Gold medal winner. American hero.
Against Hitler’s Aryan elites, Jesse Owens won four gold medals in track and field at the 1936 Berlin Olympics.
The swastika banners were hung everywhere.
Millions of Reichmarks were spent to fund the training of the blond, blue-eyed German athletes.
And in 1936 Berlin, from his lavish balcony, Adolf Hitler saluted his athletes with an outstretched arm, promising that, through sports, the world would finally see “Aryan superiority.”
This was Hitler’s Olympics.
Jesse Owens was the grandson of a slave, the son of a sharecropper. He suffered from bouts of pneumonia.
He bloomed as a runner. Colleges fought over him—but that didn’t mean they thought he was equal.
At Ohio State, he was not offered a scholarship, even though he broke high school world records.
And unlike the Aryan supermen, Jesse Owens worked part-time just to eat.
Working as a gas station attendant, as a waiter, as a night elevator operator, at the campus library stacks—no one paid his way. Ever.
The German journalists and announcers wouldn’t even use his name.
They said that “the Negro Owens” was a “nonhuman.”
They thought the Aryan win was guaranteed.
Jesse Owens competed in four events at the 1936 Olympics.
He won the gold medal in all four.
And when he stood on the victory platform, surrounded by swastikas and soldiers, the German crowd of 110,000 couldn’t help but cheer.
Rising to their feet, they were no longer chanting Hitler’s name.
They were cheering for Jesse Owens. *
One chance is all you need.
—Jesse Owens
Upon returning to America, a ticker-tape parade was held in Jesse Owens’s honor, but he was forced to ride the freight elevator to the reception at the Waldorf Astoria.