Heroes will let you down — except one

Fallen astronaut Lisa Nowak was so much in the public eye there are hundreds of images of her. But the one that sticks with me shows her lecturing young girls at the elementary school she once attended. The eyes of the girls glisten with awe.

Today, those eyes are likely glistening with tears.

In a letter to the editor Friday, Don Merrill talked about Nowak's fall from grace and lamented how many heroes from his youth had collapsed before his eyes. It got me thinking about my own boyhood idol, "Nellie" Fox, the Chicago White Sox second baseman.

Why I bonded so firmly with Fox I'll never know. I suspect I saw him as a substitute for my strict father. All I know is Nellie Fox couldn't take a footstep without me following it.

He used a Wilson baseball glove, so I bought one.

He wore No. 2. So did I.

He was going bald, so I shaved my 10-year-old head into a widow's peak.

And he always had a big plug of chewing tobacco in his cheek. I shredded brown licorice to chew but planned on switching to chewing tobacco when I got older.

Fox died in 1975 at age 48, from cancer. If I'd followed him all the way, I'd probably be pushing up daisies myself today.

Sooner or later, idols will let you down — sometimes without even realizing it. As a friend once told me, "Put a person on a pedestal and they'll eventually kick you in the teeth."

Some have tried to look to history for their heroes — figuring they're beyond reproach. But "revisionist historians" spend their days smashing icons. They dig out every detail to humanize the most noble figures from the past. It's why Oscar Wilde said, "Biography adds a new terror to death."

No hero is above reproach. That's why, as I age, I see more and more the wisdom in a line from the Bible — a line I first heard about the time I was aping Nellie Fox. It's the passage in Matthew where the Rich Young Man calls Jesus "Good Master." Jesus replies, "Why callest thou me good? There is none good but one, that is God."

If I can be allowed to paraphrase, I think he's saying, "Only put God on a pedestal. Others will eventually kick you in the teeth."

Every human being has flaws. If you set a human being up as a guiding star and they begin to slip, they can throw you off course. We should fix our gaze on the real "star" — the North Star. Other stars will always fade.

Today, the young girls who saw Lisa Nowak as the queen of the universe must deal with that reality. I've had to deal with it dozens of times. I still get get confused and feel a bit lost when someone I admire is shown to have feet of clay.

It's also why I hope parents, professionals, religious leaders — all who blaze trails for the young — would do well to keep youngsters looking beyond them and keep them focused on the North Star — the "one who is good."

Everyone else is vulnerable to taking a tumble. I look at Nowak and think, "There but for grace go I." The key, I think, is to make sure those behind us are hooked onto something stable so if we do happen to slip, we don't take their ideals and hopes down with us.

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E-mail: jerjohn@desnews.com