On Friday, November 13, 1970, my dad and I went to a dinner the night before Notre Dame was scheduled to play a home football game against Georgia Tech. Attending that dinner was a Notre Dame legend, the 1947 Heisman trophy winner, Johnny Lujack. My dad urged me to walk over to where he was sitting and ask for his autograph. Being eleven years-old at the time, and already a devoted Irish fan, I got out of my seat and headed toward his table. As I got close to him, he turned and smiled.
“Mr. Lujack, can I have your autograph?” I said. He took his fork, tapped on his water glass, and the room got deathly still. Leaning over, he said, “Do you know the Notre Dame Victory March?”
“Yes sir,” I said. Lujack then stood up and asked the room to sing the Victory March with me. I’ll never forget that experience as long as I live. Johnny Lujack became one of my heroes that day. Sadly, he died today, July 25, 2023, at the age of 98.
Besides being raised by loving parents and a community of believers, having a hero might be the most important thing a young person can have in his or her life. Maybe even more than siblings or friends. A hero gives a young person a standard to strive for, a model of behavior and accomplishment to set one’s sights upon.
In today’s world of cynicism and social media shallowness, I sure hope youngsters still have heroes. Not celebrities, but true heroes. The former may be famous, but not necessarily worthy of being called heroes. So, what makes a person worthy of that moniker? It comes down to the how. How they lived their life, and how they handled failure or success, determines whether a person is just a celebrity or hero. A person cannot be a celebrity without achieving some level of fame, but a person can be a hero without it. As Homer Hickam said to his coal-mining dad in the movie October Sky –
Dad, I may not be the best, but I come to believe that I got it in me to be somebody in this world. And it’s not because I’m so different from you either, it’s because I’m the same. I mean, I can be just as hard-headed, and just as tough. I only hope I can be as good a man as you. Sure, Wernher von Braun is a great scientist, but he isn’t my hero.
What this means to me is that if we work hard, and live an honorable life, we can be a hero to somebody. Does it get any better than that?
A few days ago, I heard a golf instructor suggest to a struggling young player that he should lower his expectations. He explained that the pros practice every day and since the young player didn’t, he should not expect to follow in their footsteps. That conversation bothered me. In all my years of coaching I can’t remember ever giving that kind of advice. It seems today that we have a culture that tends to lower expectations and I’m not sure why. Doesn’t greatness always follow inspiration? Wouldn’t it have been more appropriate for the instructor to explain that achieving proficiency at any noteworthy level would require significantly more effort, and leave it at that?
Who sets our expectations? Does it come from inside a person, or are there outside influences? Certainly, discouragers and cynics can drag expectations lower, while encouragers and heroes can guide them higher, but some people cling to high expectations despite the naysayers, while others refuse to dream big even when they are encouraged to do so. In my view, there has to be something inside each of us that plays an important role as well.
Somehow, I’d like to see our country start to raise expectations again. I’d like us to elevate the quiet heroes like Homer’s dad, and all the other people throughout the land, who work hard and live honorably. Heroes and their inspiration are out there, we just have to look for them.
As he explained to his dad, Homer had it in him to accomplish something special, and he did, as a NASA engineer and best-selling author of the book “Rocket Boys.” Perhaps there is something in all of us… We just need a hero to set our sights upon…