by Brad Meltzer
Failure is unimportant. It takes courage to make a fool of yourself.
—Charlie Chaplin
—ICON—
oprah winfrey
Talk show host. Influence maker. Businesswoman.
In 1983 Oprah Winfrey was given a local Chicago-area talk show to host. It was dead last in the ratings. Then it became an internationally syndicated phenomenon.
Maybe it was the poverty—wearing potato sacks as dresses and keeping cockroaches as pets.
Maybe it was running away from an abusive home, with no one to help her.
Or maybe it was being told by her bosses to get plastic surgery, since her eyes were too far apart, her nose was too flat, and her hair was too “black.”
It could have been any of these experiences. Or all of them.
But somewhere along the way, the little girl with so much drive, the little girl who loved to talk, the one they used to call “the Preacher,” came to a conclusion.
She teaches it every day. And we love her because even she’s still learning it: The only person you ever need to be is yourself. *
Do the one thing you think you cannot do. Fail at it. Try again. Do better the second time. The only people who never tumble are those who never mount the high wire.
—Oprah Winfrey
—GOOD GUY—
officer frank shankwitz
Cofounder of the Make-A-Wish Foundation.
Highway patrolman Frank Shankwitz cofounded the Make-A-Wish Foundation after he saw what a day of escape could mean to a child with a life-threatening medical condition. Thanks to Frank’s vision, a wish is now granted every forty minutes.
It started with a boy named Chris Greicius.
Chris wanted to be a police officer.
The problem was, he had leukemia. He was dying.
But when Chris met Officer Frank Shankwitz, when he saw Shankwitz’s motorcycle, and when Shankwitz came to the boy’s home and created a toy-motorcycle riding test, for just that day Chris forgot about the leukemia eating away at his body.
Two days after the visit, Chris was in a coma.
Shankwitz went to the boy’s hospital room to present him with real “motorcycle wings.”
When he pinned them on the boy’s uniform, young Chris actually came out of the coma.
And smiled.
On the flight back from Chris’s funeral, Shankwitz had an idea.
What if he could somehow give that same joy to other kids like Chris…just for one day?
Right there, the Make-A-Wish Foundation was born. H
I am still amazed and inspired how one little boy’s dream to be a policeman has touched the lives of so many thousands of people.
—Linda Bergandahl-Pauling, mother of Chris Greicius
—AGITATOR—
mark twain
Humorist. Novelist. Storyteller.
The author of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain was the greatest humorist in American history. More important, he used his abilities as a fiction writer to share his convictions with the world.
People thought they were reading something funny.
They thought it’d give them a taste of the deep South.
They thought they were getting the local color along the Mississippi River.
They thought Huckleberry Finn was just some story about a boy.
And it was.
But it was also a manifesto.
A challenge.
An uncompromising fistfight against injustice and slavery.
People thought they were getting a book.
But Mark Twain knew that if you really want to teach people something, you need to tell them a story. *
Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too, can become great.
—Mark Twain
Always do right. This will gratify some people and astonish the rest.
—Mark Twain
—FIRST LADY—
eleanor roosevelt
Activist. Role model. Wife of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
The first lady during the Great Depression and World War II, Eleanor Roosevelt became a fighter for women’s rights, minorities’ rights, and social justice.
In 1932, seventeen thousand veterans and their families descended on Washington, D.C., and built a tent city, demanding what they believed were overdue payments for their service during World War I.
President Hoover sent General Douglas MacArthur and troops armed with fixed bayonets to meet the veterans with force. With tanks. With tear gas.
By March 1933, when the veterans returned, FDR was president. Instead of sending the Army, he sent his wife, Eleanor Roosevelt.
The first lady went to the tent city. Alone.
In mud and rain, she walked among the veterans. She talked to them like people. She listened.
Soon after, an executive order was issued that created twenty-five thousand jobs for veterans through the Civilian Conservation Corps and eventually led to the 1944 passage of the GI Bill of Rights, which gave veterans federal assistance in returning to civilian life. *
No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.
—Eleanor Roosevelt
Many journalists suggested that if Eleanor Roosevelt wanted to comment on politics, she should do it off the record. That wasn’t her way.
“I am making these statements on purpose,” she said, “to arouse controversy and thereby get the topics talked about.”
Race relations, the suffrage movement, poverty—every topic was fair game. Indeed, President Roosevelt didn’t publicly support civil rights for black people—until after the first lady started speaking out against the social injustice of Jim Crow laws.
—EXPLORER—
neil armstrong
Test pilot. Astronaut. Space traveler.
On July 20, 1969, Apollo 11 mission commander Neil Armstrong became the first person to set foot on the moon, embodying the hopes and dreams of generations.
At ten, he started cutting grass at the cemetery, just so he could earn enough money to buy that model plane.
But a model wouldn’t cut it.
At fifteen, he worked three jobs at forty cents an hour, saving it all to pay for flying lessons.
But lessons could only take him so far.
At sixteen, when his friends were learning to drive, he earned his pilot’s license. Then he hitched a ride home to tell his parents.
But he still didn’t have a plane.
At thirty, he fearlessly tested two hundred different aircraft.
The X-15 rocket plane went faster and higher than any plane had gone before. But it wasn’t fast enough.
At thirty-nine, he floated down the ladder, his voice calm, his movements unhurried.
Then he took a small step…and began walking on the moon.
Still, Neil Armstrong was being modest.
It wasn’t just one small step that got him there.
It was the thousands that came before it. *
I think we’re going to the moon because it’s in the nature of the human being to face challenges.
—Neil Armstrong
—IDEALIST—
paul new man
Actor. Sex symbol. Philanthropist.
Founder of the Newman’s Own food line and benefactor of numerous philanthropic causes, actor Paul Newman used his fame to help others.
It started the week before Christmas 1980.
He mixed the first big batch of salad dressing in his basement, stirring the tub with a canoe paddle.
They poured it into wine bottles and put ribbons on them.
He thought it’d be fun. Then it got serious.
Even if it didn’t work, all the profits were going to charity, so at least there’d be a little bit more for cancer research.
Dressings, popcorns, salsas, and $265 million later, movie star Paul Newman proved that true success doesn’t come from gett
ing—it comes from giving.
To this day, larger companies regularly approach Newman’s Own, offering to acquire it. These offers are—always—politely refused. *
A man with no enemies is a man with no character.
—Paul Newman
I’d like to be remembered as a guy who tried—tried to be part of his times, tried to help people communicate with one another, tried to find some decency in his own life, tried to extend himself as a human being. Someone who isn’t complacent, who doesn’t cop out.
—Paul Newman
—LEGEND—
pelé
Soccer superstar. Natural athlete. Worldwide phenomenon.
Brazilian soccer superstar Edison Arantes do Nascimento—better known as Pelé—is one of the greatest athletes the modern world has ever known. According to Time magazine, “He scored an average of a goal in every international game he played—the equivalent of a baseball player’s hitting a home run in every World Series game over 15 years.”
Scoring is great.
Blocking is great.
Winning is great.
But none of those equals greatness.
In 1967 the Nigerian civil war came to a sudden halt.
For forty-eight hours the two sides—so determined to murder each other—called a ceasefire.
They hadn’t reached a moment of understanding.
They just wanted to watch Pelé play his exhibition match in the Nigerian capital of Lagos.
When the match was over, they would go back to violence and murder.
But for forty-eight hours, they would all stand together—just to witness this one man’s God-given gift.
To witness greatness. *
Success is no accident. It is hard work, perseverance, learning, studying, sacrifice, and most of all, love of what you are doing or learning to do.
—Pelé
—TEENAGER—
barbara johns
High school student. Civil rights activist.
In 1951, sixteen-year-old Barbara Johns organized a walkout from her all-black high school. It led to Brown v. Board of Education and the end of public school segregation.
In 1951 Barbara Johns’s school held 450 black students, all of them crowded into a building meant for 200.
Their books were tattered. Their classrooms had no heat.
One morning, when she missed her bus, she waited, hoping another might come.
Another did.
But it blew right by her, filled with white kids, heading to their newer, less crowded school.
As the bus disappeared, Barbara decided she’d organize a walkout.
Before Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King Jr., the early civil rights movement relied a great deal on the power of normal, unknown teenagers.
Teenagers.
Thanks to sixteen-year-old Barbara Johns, Moton High School held a two-week strike.
The NAACP helped them sue for an integrated school.
And it became one of the five cases that the Supreme Court reviewed when it declared segregation unconstitutional in Brown v. Board of Education.
For her reward, Barbara’s house was burned down.
She never regretted it. *
We knew we had to do it ourselves and that if we had asked for adult help before taking the first step, we would have been turned down.
—Barbara Johns
—PRISONER—
aung san suu kyi
Political captive. Leader of Burma’s democratic movement.
Burmese opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi has devoted her life to the freedom of the Burmese people. For peacefully advocating a nonviolent struggle over a military dictatorship, she won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1991. The repressive government of Burma has kept her in detention for much of the time since 1989. She still won’t give up.
With a crowd of 500,000 watching her, Aung San Suu Kyi seized the microphone. She was just a housewife. She had never held political office.
All she wanted was freedom—true democracy—for her beloved country of Burma. Her plan? That was the surprise.
She stuck to one principle: nonviolent demonstration.
The brutal Burmese leaders reacted by killing hundreds and crushing the pro-democracy rallies.
Suu Kyi’s response was the same. Peace.
They placed her under house arrest without charges or a trial.
When her pro-democracy party won the first Burmese elections held in thirty years, making her the rightful prime minister, the junta ignored the results.
When photographs of her began to suddenly appear on street corners, Suu Kyi’s very image was banned.
And when they offered her a way out—her freedom in return for leaving the country—Suu Kyi refused. She would never leave Burma. Not until it was free. Even if that meant she never would be.
She never fought with force. But she never backed down.
In 2003 Suu Kyi was again placed under house arrest.
She’s still there.
Over fourteen years of detention so far.
She has the key—all she has to do is leave. Behave.
Some people just don’t know how. *
In physical stature she is petite and elegant, but in moral stature she is a giant. Big men are scared of her. Armed to the teeth and they still run scared.
—Archbishop Desmond Tutu
—MENTOR—
eli segal
Businessman. Political strategist. Optimist.
As the founding CEO of the Corporation for National Service, Eli Segal helped launch AmeriCorps, President Clinton’s national service program. Along the way, through his sense of humor and genuine kindness, he inspired a generation of young people to ask what they could do to leave this country a better place.
It’s not because he helped establish AmeriCorps, enabling over 500,000 young people to do community service across our country.
It’s not because he transformed millions of lives through his leadership on the Welfare-to-Work Partnership.
It’s not because he fought so bravely against the cancer that killed him.
It’s not even because he helped elect a president.
It’s simply because, when I was twenty-one years old and he was running a small business in Boston, Eli Segal took a chance on me—his overenthusiastic intern—and offered me my very first grown-up job.
He knew I was too young. He used to lie about my age to people we would meet with.
But he believed in young people. And he believed in me. H
THE AMERICORPS PLEDGE
I will get things done for America to make our people safer, smarter, and healthier.
I will bring Americans together to strengthen our communities.
Faced with apathy, I will take action.
Faced with conflict, I will seek common ground.
Faced with adversity, I will persevere.
I will carry this commitment with me this year and beyond.
I am an AmeriCorps member…and I am going to get things done.
I was just thinking all over again what an astonishing human being he was.
—President Bill Clinton
—TROUBLEMAKER—
abraham lincoln
Lawyer. Senator. President.
One of America’s greatest leaders, Abraham Lincoln lost eight elections. Despite those defeats, he became the sixteenth president of the United States and held the country together during the bloodshed of the Civil War.