Gold: Life's heroes deserve attention

It seems to me…The Olympics have dominated our viewing hours and millions of our fellow citizens know the names of those on the USA teams. Don’t get me wrong, these athletes train very hard and have abilities of Olympians. And, in terms of athletic ability, they bring fame to themselves and to our country. But, look at the hours devoted to these games and the facts we are fed about their training, families, struggles and other personal life facts.

Then there is the Miss America and Miss Universe Pageants where beautiful young women parade across the stage to sing, dance, twirl, recite and tell us how they will change the world if they are selected as Miss Something. Sure they have some talent but how much personal information do were really need to know about them to make our lives complete?

The attention paid to the Super Bowl and the World Series every year is extraordinary and the weeks before them are filled with more facts, trivia and stories than perhaps all the volumes in the Library of Congress. The professional and college hockey and basketball, tournaments are in the same category. Stock car and formula racing get the same attention. And, of course, there is the ever famous Academy Awards and the many ceremonies to celebrate singers and dancers. Even American Idol unknowns’ names are on the tip of millions of tongues in the USA.

And, if one of the participants in any of the above competitions should die or develop an illness, it’s front page news. Sometimes we hear about it for days or weeks. Just think of what coverage there was for Michael Jackson.

Unless I missed it, there are rarely lists of names of all the servicemen and women who are injured in serving our country. Sadly it is usually a little note in the paper or a passing comment by a news anchor. Often it is given like a sports statistic. “Ten” or some number were killed today in Afghanistan is what most reports let us know. But who are these who died and what about the lives they led? These lives are reduced to statistics.

Would we do anything if we had this information? I think it would move people to do something, Certainly it would make these deaths and injuries more real than the violence on the many mindless TV shows and movies we pay to see. I think it would make us think more about the real world.

It seems to me in a ranking of those we call heroes, stars or winners, these ordinary folks who give their lives, limbs or minds are so far above all the others that we idolize daily, that we should hide our heads in shame not to give them the same recognition we give to quarterbacks, Miss Whatever, Number One Race Car Driver, or some singer or quirky dancer. When it comes down to our being free people, who will we be indebted to? Who will we want to say thank you to? Better yet…shouldn’t we be saying thank you right now? I hope you know the answer.

Harvey Gold is a contributing writer at the Stafford County Sun. Reach him at info@staffordcountysun.com.