That Elusive Garden of American Heroes

The President announced at a speech at Mt. Rushmore Friday night that he has signed an Executive Order creating a “National Garden of American Heroes.”  He proposes including:

John Adams, Susan B. Anthony, Clara Barton, Daniel Boone, Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain, Henry Clay, Davy Crockett, Frederick Douglass, Amelia Earhart, Benjamin Franklin, Billy Graham, Alexander Hamilton, Thomas Jefferson, Martin Luther King, Jr., Abraham Lincoln, Douglas MacArthur, Dolley Madison,  James Madison, Christa McAuliffe, Audie Murphy, George S. Patton, Jr., Ronald Reagan, Jackie Robinson, Betsy Ross, Antonin Scalia, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Harriet Tubman, Booker T. Washington, George Washington, and Orville and Wilbur Wright

[See Note 1]

As I read the list, I’m familiar in a general sense with everyone, and know a lot about the bio’s of about half.  Based on this, I can see people where were physically brave and proved it; who were socially/philosophically brave and proved it; were kind and proved it; were in a minority then but as we see now, were simply talking good and obvious sense; scholars  (mostly unacknowledged); and people who stuck to their guns when they “knew” they were right.

[“And proved it” – See Note 2]

I can also see at least two people who had rare religious beliefs (protected by the First Amendment) in reincarnation; at least three people who owned slaves; at least three people whose careers may be true more in myth and legend  than facts; at least three people who had a huge positive effect on American life, two of whom are not really acknowledged; several people who functioned with what we now call mental illness; some shameless self-promoters; and people who are reputed and may actually have believed things that were unpopular at the time and are abhorrent now.  Nope, I’m not going to call names.  And most readers’ lists will be a tad different from mine. 

Were I a committee of one charged with making the list, some of the same people would be on my list, others wouldn’t, and I would come up with at least 100 additional names to be included. After all, there is no shortage of American heroes.

Let me rattle them off.   And no, this is not in order of importance. In fact, I don’t think I could put them in any surd order:

Cesar Chavez.

Neil Armstrong. It’s not because just because he landed on the moon by hand when the computer was aiming for a crater, but for saving Gemini 8 when the attitude control rockets malfunctioned and put it into a near-fatal spin.

George Washington Carver.

Albert Einstein.

Poncho Carter.

Simon Kenton.

Nathaniel Hawthorne.

The Dulles brothers.

George H. W. Bush

Bill Clinton. Eight years of prosperity and peace does count.

Margaret Chase Smith.

Sandra O’Day Connor.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

John Quincy Adams

William Howard Taft.

Thurgood Marshall.

Earl Warren.

Barry Goldwater.

Lyndon Johnson. Vietnam killed him but he is responsible for the Civil Rights Acts and the Voting Rights Act.

Franklin Roosevelt.

Theodore Roosevelt.

Eleanor Roosevelt.

Gayle Sayers.

Pat Brown.

Harley Earl.

Henry J. Kaiser.

John L Lewis. A small personal connection. Oce Worthington Smith, Jr., knew him and told me about his stories of working in the early coal mines.

Eugene Debs.

Bo Jackson.

Sitting Bull.

Crazy Horse.

Chief Joseph.

Russell Means.

Sacajawea.

Schuyler Colfax.

Sam Houston.

Jeannette Rankin.

Thomas Paine.

Ernest Hemingway.

Pearl Buck.

Geraldine Ferraro.

Daniel Carter Beard.

Carl Sagan.

John Marshall.

John Jay.

George W. DeLong.

George Melville.

Herman Melville.

Bill Harcourt.

Cornel West.

Lewis and Clarke.

Hugh Glass.

Jack Johnson.

Ransom E. Olds.

William O. Douglas.

Robert Jackson.

Winfield Scott Hancock.

John Hancock.

Richard Henry Dana.

Ayn Rand.

Danny Thomas.

Burl Ives.

William Seward.

Henry Belafonte.

Mary Travers.

Peter Schickele.

Phillip Glass.

Virgil Fox.

Y. A. Tittle.

Colin Powell.

Barbara Jordan.

Elmo Zumwalt.

Juliete Gordon Low.

Thomas Edison.

Nikola Tesla.

Jock Yablonski.

Shirley Chisholm.

James Brown.

Adam Clayton Powell.

Everett Dirkson.

Milton L. Olive, III.  Years ago, I met one of the people he saved.

Andrew Carnegie.  I remember fondly all of the time I spent in my high school days in the Carnegie Library.

Matthew M. Neely.  Among other things, he founded the National Cancer Institute.

John Muir.

David Hackworth.

Henry A. Wallace.

Eliot Ness.

Betty Ford.

Harry Truman.

Gene Autry.

Louisa May Alcott.

Chris Kraft.

Neil DeGrasse Tyson.

Ernest Thompson Seton.

Louis Brandeis.

There, that’s about 100.

They also include:

Everybody who invaded Normandy.

The 500 – or so – firefighters, police, EMS people and semi- or untrained people who nevertheless gave their lives in the September 11 attacks helping others. Heck, about the 50,000 to 100,000 who directly served on those scenes.  (I wish I could put an “irregardless” in there to match the “nevertheless,” but I can’t figure out how.)

How about every firefighter who has stayed just a little bit too long in a burning building and who their buddies have had to “put out” when they came out. (Tim is one.)

People who had been attacked and killed based on race or beliefs or a wrongful conviction.

People who have served nation and community faithfully without doing some particular thing “bravely” but have worked midnight shift, Christmas, showed up to work sick, and without ever being thanked.

Miners with black lung and other respiratory diseases. Or miners who have blown their back out on the job.

This is the list which I came up with off to top of my head.  I really do hope that you disagree – maybe violently – with my list.  That’s the whole idea.  One person’s hero is another person’s jerk.  

How do we pick  the people to be honored?

Well, there is politics.  OK, the issue is to be decided by Congress.  They take it to the House of Representatives.  The Chair of the Appropriations Committee [used to be Bro. Alan B. Mollohan, I’ve no idea who holds the position now – and I’m too lazy to look] is an admirer of police and bank robbers.  So s/he wants the Garden to include Wyatt Earp and John Dillinger.  S/he won’t let it out of Committee if it doesn’t include those two.  That each is prominent in his field is self-apparent – I don’t need to tell readers of these Dispatches who they were.  Let’s assume that most folks wouldn’t want Earp and Dillinger included.  Is the Chair “right” in seeking their inclusion?  Is it “right” either to make a deal with the chair and include them or to refuse and cancel or delay the whole project?

The answer is:  [Drum roll] I don’t know.

Trusting the answer to the political process seems foolhardy.

How about a commission.  As long as it includes me.  It probably won’t.  Darn.

How about a vote on the internet.  That might be fair, as long as we was frequent and included lots of heroes. 

Maybe the Garden, wherever it is at, contained sites which could be easily swapped out.  Maybe a 1,000 plus possible who are changed weekly, randomly or with a schedule.  Perhaps that would attract people to visit repeatedly.  Or maybe the visitors would be mainly wonky.  Well, Wonky Person Liberation.

Mizpah!

Note 1 – How the President can do this without any action of Congress is unclear to me.  The Courts have let him transfer funding authorized for the Department of Defense to build the border wall.  The Constitution provides that Congress has to appropriate money and that has to originate in the House of Representatives. 

Note 2 – “And they proved it.”  Many Christians (and many non-Christians] find wisdom in the New Testament.  Thomas Jefferson – possibly a deist, but we’re not sure – prepared with scissors and glue “the Jefferson Bible” which was shorn of miracles and other supernatural influences, but contained the “wisdom,” including most of the parables.) A book which particularly speaks to me is the Book of James:

Dear friends, do you think you’ll get anywhere in this if you learn all the right words but never do anything? Does merely talking about faith indicate that a person really has it? For instance, you come upon an old friend dressed in rags and half-starved and say, “Good morning, friend! Be clothed in Christ!  Be filled with the Holy Spirit!” and walk off without providing so much as a coat or a cup of soup? Where does that get you? Isn’t it obvious that God-talk without God-acts is outrageous nonsense? I can always already hear one of you saying, “Sounds good. You keep take care of the faith department, I’ll handle the works department.” Not so fast. You can no more show me your works apart from your faith than I can show you my faith apart from my works. Faith and works, works and faith, fit together hand in glove. Do I hear you profess to believe the one and only God, but then observe you complacently sitting back as if you had done something wonderful? That’s just great. Demons do that, but what good does it do them? Use your heads! Do you suppose for a minute that you can cut faith and works in two and not end up with a corpse on your hands?

James, “The Message” translation.