Heros, sometimes, can help us on life's path

Muhammad Ali is someone I have always admired. Looking back 45 years he is been often someone who inspired me and I have found fascinating. I have watched his fights over and over many times. He was a strategist, a thinker, and had no fear. That’s enough to make this list. Then too he often seemed to look within himself and came out with things that were odd at the time. Poetry was not a common thread for Boxers, then or now. I recall two times he caught my attention using one short, “poem”. Once in an interview with Larry Holmes before a coming fight Holmes commented and he suggested he would just "mow-over" Ali. Ali was then asked to say something. His reply, he claimed, was the world’s shortest poem and a celebration of who he was and what he was about. He said.

"Me? Whhheeeee!"

Later in his career he was speaking to the graduation class at Harvard. After a good speech suggesting they had advantages he didn’t and they ought to use them someone yelled to him from the audience saying "give us a poem". His immediate response was “Me? Whhheeee!” I recall hearing this and thinking then how underestimated Ali’s intellect was considered by many.

If one defines poetry, as is a "form of art" in which language is used for its aesthetic, then indeed Ali was a master of that language.

William F Buckley Jr. is also someone I have admired over 40 years. I was an am impressed with his first widely known book. “God and Man at Yale” was something different. It made somewhat unique comments for the time both then and now about the ideological impact of what an education should be. At the time he was almost alone in the way he suggested that a University was not obligated to present all sides. He said then, and has been consistent in that suggestion, that Christianity and Atheism is the most important duel in the world and that what it really amounts to is a struggle between individualism and collectivism. 50 years later this is as relevant as then. I also have admired his respect for his own church.

Gordon Bitner Hinckley was born June 23, 1910 and is 15th President of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, a position he has held since March 12, 1995, and is oldest person to preside over the LDS Church in its history. As Presidentof the LDS Church, he is considered by its members to be a prophet, seer, and revelatory. I have over my own lifetime marveled at President Hinckley’s life.
His influence for good surpasses all others that I can think of in my lifetime. He was born 4 years before my own father and he is in full charge today actively working to build the church.

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Jesus Christ: As a hero and a person to admire "He" surpasses all and is greater than the "sum of all others combined". I will not print his picture on this blog as I feel it would trivialize his “majesty” to be printed in such a way. If I had not learned and concluded that this blog will really only have influence with a very few, since it will likely only be read by those who really do mean the most to me, I would not even list his name here, since I consider it scared. He is the only "true hero". If I try to find a hero for my life it leaves me no choice but to list Him. He is a "person", He lives and He can show us the path to live best, better than any other hero every will. I love Him.

***The path above leads to the front door of the Seoul Korea Temple