Tag: heroes

It’s Nobel Prize Week!

~ purplesage41 ~ 2 Comments

The week of October 6th is a nice change from elections and football games to honor the gifts of mind and soul. The world will honor five great minds and one great soul, or at least a great-souled organization and its leader.   Between October 6th and October 12th, six Nobel prizes will be awarded in Stockholm and Oslo. They honor outstanding achievements in physics, chemistry, physiology or medicine, literature, economics, and for work in peace. In a time of year when most of our attention to competition and success is focused on football, the Nobel Prizes are reminders of the value of other kinds of achievements and role models.

 Alfred Nobel was an inventor, scientist and businessman who also wrote poetry and drama. He is best known as the inventor of dynamite.  In 1895, he wrote his last will, leaving much of his wealth to the establishment of these prizes.  The sixth prize, the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel, was added in 1968.

With apologies to my non-South Carolina followers, I checked out the six awardees over the years with close ties to South Carolina, covering every category except literature. 

Charles Townes (Physics, 1964) was a native of Greenville. Townes shared the prize for his fundamental work in quantum electronics, which led to the invention of the laser.

 Joseph Goldstein (Medicine, 1985 )was born in Sumter and was in was awarded the prize for discoveries concerning cholesterol metabolism.

Kary Mullis (Chemistry, 1993) was born in North Carolina but grew up in Columbia. He won the prize for inventing the polymerase chain reaction technique.

Robert Furchgott (Medicine, 1998) was born in  Charleston and was recognized for discoveries about the signaling role of nitric oxide in the cardiovascular system.

Benjamin Bernanke (Economic Sciences, 2022) was born in Georgia but grew up in Dillon, South Carolina, and received the prize for research on banks and financial crises, specifically the Great Depression. He was also chair of the Federa Reserve during the 2998 housing meltdown.He had to teach himself calculus to get into Harvard since it was not taught in Dillon County schools, and during his summers home from Boston he worked at the well-known stopping place on I95, South of the Border.

My last South Carolina honoree was born in Lamar. David Beasley, a Clemson University graduate, served as governor in 1995-99 where he presided over removing the Confederate flag from the top of the statehouse, thus losing a bid for a second term. Beasley went on to serve as executive director of the United Nations World Food Programme from2017 to 2023. He accepted the 2020 Nobel Peace Prize on behalf of the organization.

Looking for role models for your adolescents? Sports heroes and entertainers are fine, but so are people who achieve great things by working in their own way to make the world a better place! Share a Hero with someone during Nobel week.

Black History Month

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Black History Month succeeded Negro History Month which was established in 1926. Exhibits, readings, displays, and other events remind us of our “favorite” black leaders. Black history gets the shortest month of the year, so we need to celebrate fast. It is followed by Women’s History Month in March and Pride Moth in June, leaving the other nine moths to presumably celebrate Cis-gendered white male contributions to our history.

Although I was born in Connecticut, I have spent most of my adult life in my adopted state of South Carolina.  I teach a short course for the Osher Lifelong Learning Center called “South Carolinians Who Should Be Famous but Aren’t’.” One of my favorites is a black man named Robert Smalls. I learned this story from a colleague in the history department at Clemson University. j was teaching an interdisciplinary honors course on risk and asked Alan Schaffer to give two lectures on great risk takers in history. I don’t remember who the other hero was, but Robert Smalls was unforgettable.

Robert Smalls was born in Beaufort in 1839, the son of a house slave. He grew up with his master’s son as a playmate.  When the master died, Robert became the property of his childhood playmate. They moved to Charleston and Robert was rented out to work on ships.  He was a hard worker and skilled in many tasks, so his master allowed him to marry and have children.  But Robert wanted something more.

The Civil War came, and in 1963, the Union navy blockaded the port of Charleston. The slaves who worked on the ship The Plantation know that the white crew went ashore most nights for rowdy times in the taverns.  Under Roberrt’s leaderships, the black workers hatched a plot. One night, when the white crew members were ashore, the slave crew stowed themselves and their families on the ship and set sail toward the blockading Union ships. Roert knew all the passwords at checkpoints, and having reached close to the Union ships, the crew hauled down the confederate flag and hoisted a white flag of surrender.  Supposedly, his words to the commander of the US. Navy ship were, “Christmas present for Mr. Lincoln.”

The former slaves were welcomed into the Union navy.  Robert Smalls learned to read, write, and navigate.  After the war he returned to Beaufort and served in the state legislature and the U.S. Congress.  While a state legislator, he authored legislation requiring the state to provide free public education for all children, black or white. Even after the end of Reconstruction, he remained active in local politics until his death in 1913.  The main street in the town of Beaufort where he was born is now Robert Smalls Boulevard.

Black History Month

Black History Month succeeded Negro History Month which was established in 1926. Exhibits, readings, displays, and other events remind us of our “favorite” black leaders. Black history gets the shortest month of the year, so we need to celebrate fast. It is followed by Women’s History Month in March and Pride Moth in June, leaving the other nine moths to presumably celebrate Cis-gendered white male contributions to our history.

Although I was born in Connecticut, I have spent most of my adult life in my adopted state of South Carolina.  I teach a short course for the Osher Lifelong Learning Center called “South Carolinians Who Should Be Famous but Aren’t’.” One of my favorites is a black man named Robert Smalls. I learned this story from a colleague in the history department. j was teaching an interdisciplinary honors course on risk and asked Alan Schaffer to give two lectures on great risk takers in history. I don’t remember who the other hero was, but Robert Smalls was unforgettable.

Robert Smalls was born in Beaufort in 1839, the son of a house slave. He grew up with his master’s son as a playmate.  When the master died, Robert became the property of his childhood playmate. They moved to Charleston and Robert was rented out to work on ships.  He was a hard worker and skilled in many tasks, so his master allowed him to marry and have children.  But Robert wanted something more.

The Civil War came, and in 1963, the Union navy blockaded the port of Charleston. The slaves who worked on the ship The Plantation know that the white crew went ashore most nights for rowdy times in the taverns.  Under Roberrt’s leaderships, the black workers hatched a plot. One night, when the white crew members were ashore, the slave crew stowed themselves and their families on the ship and set sail toward the blockading Union ships. Roert knew all the passwords at checkpoints, and having reached close to the Union ships, the crew hauled down the confederate flag and hoisted a white flag of surrender.  Supposedly, his words to the commander of the US. Navy ship were, “Christmas present for Mr. Lincoln.”

The former slaves were welcomed into the Union navy.  Robert Smalls learned to read, write, and navigate.  After the war he returned to Beaufort and served in the state legislature and the U.S. Congress.  While a state legislator, he authored legislation requiring the state to provide free public education for all children, black or white. Even after the end of Reconstruction, he remained active in local politics until his death in 1913.  The main street in the town of Beaufort where he was born is now Robert Smalls Boulevard.

Causes, Heroes, and Statues

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One of my favorite living heroes, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, died this week.  It happened while I was working on a sermon for October 11th called After Columbus, about statues  (that will be my next blog). Her death led me to reflect on what makes someone a hero. In brief, showing courage and dedication in a noble cause.  That heroism may be in spite of various flaws, but the courage, dedication, and noble cause are all required.  That third criterion is what distinguishes Washington and Jefferson from Robert E. Lee in the great battle over statues.

I started by enumerating noble causes, and I came up with four that date back to at least the early nineteenth century and are still with us today: Abolition and civil rights, suffrage and feminism, humanitarian support, and environmental protection. You may have others.  Certainly there are heroes of a more intellectual bent who made pioneering contributions to science, medicine, engineering, astronomy, mathematics, biology.  Courage was not always evident, but it certainly was for Galileo and Darwin.  However, for me, the four noble causes are enough. 

Here are my heroes. If you haven’t heard of some of them, Google them.

For abolition and civil rights: Frederick Douglass, Nelson Mandela, Martin Luther King jr., the Grimke sisters, Robert Smalls, Theodore Parker, Sojourner Truth, Harriet Tubman.

For suffrage and feminism: Abigail Adams, the Grimke sisters and Frederick Douglass again, Alice Paul, Lucretia Mott, Gloria Steinem, Margaret Sanger, Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

For humanitarian work: Jimmy Carter, Eleanor Roosevelt, Jane Addams, Mahatma Gandhi, Dag Hammerskjold, Bryan Stevenson, Dorothea Dix.

For environmental protection: Theodore Roosevelt, John Muir, Rachel Carson, All Gore, and countless Native American tribes.

What are your causes and who are your heroes? What are you doing to follow in their footsteps, which is a better way to honor them than by erecting a statue or naming a building?