Heroes for My Son (3 page)

President of South Africa, 1994 to 1999.

 

 

N
elson 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.
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Father of the Green Revolution.

 

 

T
he 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.
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Clergyman. Civil rights activist. Nobel Peace Prize winner.

 

 

T
he 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.
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Teacher.

 

 

N
o 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.
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Legendary singer-songwriter. Peace activist.

 

 

W
hen 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 phone and having him followed, John knew that there was only one way to deal with naysayers.

 

You just have to keep singing your song.
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Abolitionist. Union spy.

 

 

W
hen 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.
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