Contact: Roger Martin, Research and Public Service, (785) 864-7239.
You've heard of John Kennedy, who created the Peace Corps by executive order after the U.S. Congress nixed it three times. Maybe you've heard of Margaret Sanger, who founded Planned Parenthood, giving poor women the same access to birth control as rich ones.
But I doubt you've heard of the small-town Kansas kid I'm about to discuss.
At his mother's request, I won't use his last name. I'll just call him John.
John's sister, Beth, a University of Kansas sophomore, recently told a young scholars symposium at KU why John should be mentioned in the same breath as Kennedy and Sanger.
Beth was one of 18 sophomores to speak at the symposium, which capped an honors class on the topic of the hero.
John's a fifth grader in a small town near Lawrence. He's made almost all A's in school. He's got more upper body strength than any of his peers.
When folks ask him how he's doing, Beth says, John's answer is always the same:
Great.
This answer has been bought and paid for, and it didn't come cheap. John wasn't born with a silver spoon in his mouth. He was born with cocaine in his bloodstream--a crack baby.
Beth's parents took him in at age six days. Beth shows video clips of his early life. In one, John's nested on a couch in a row of Cabbage Patch dolls. He's a cinch to pick out. He's got the shakes.
Here's another clip of John. He's headed toward first base, running out a foul ball--well, running's not quite the right word. John's outfitted with a walker because he has cerebral palsy. But that didn't keep him from playing ball two summers in a row.
Beth says John's her hero. Why? Early in the semester, English professor Jim Carothers had provided the class a definition of "hero" to ponder.
Heroes, Carothers said, act decisively. Beth says that John can be as indecisive as any 10-year-old, at least in his behavior. But when it comes to attitude, he's a rock. As his fifth-grade teacher says, "If John can say 'Great!' to tell us how he's feeling, then what do the rest of us have to complain about?"
The hero must possess strength, courage, intelligence and virtue. Says Beth, "John can bench-press as much as some high school kids. And he's emotionally strong, too." He had to be. The day he started school, he was its only black student. He was also, Beth says, the only student with a dramatic physical disability.
Next, the hero acts at personal risk. "Everything John does," says Beth, "he does at personal risk. Kids can make fun of him about almost everything."
The hero's risks serve to create, preserve or restore order to a community. John has created in his town an awareness about the need for ramps that lead to schoolhouse doors and for mats in front of water fountains.
Do you know how dangerous wet floors are to those who wear forearm crutches? John could tell you.
I think Beth's parents are pretty heroic, too. They're prominent in their town (he's a basketball coach) yet they took this crack baby in.
Would people talk? You bet. Endlessly.
But the family took that risk. In doing so, it championed a social ideal that gets more lip-service than life-service: that we need to be kind toward the unclaimed, unloved lives all around us.