Maybe it’s something about July 4th that causes us to reflect on heroes of our past but do we not see the heroes of today?  A hero is a person who fights for those they do not know, a hero fights for their family, a hero fights for their country regardless of how ungrateful a large portion of them may be.  Our men and women in uniform both at home and abroad are there to protect our rights, our beliefs, our constitution.  Regardless of your political beliefs they deserve our respect, our admiration, and our support.

 

Heroes are also those that we rely on at home, firefighters and law enforcement.  Many of the nations firefighters are volunteer living and working in small towns across America.  Rarely do we look at firefighters as volunteers but many of them give up off time from their regular jobs for training and other exercises never mind that they answer the call to a burning structure at 2am.  In many cases they are first on scene to auto accidents and have to deal with some pretty horrific scenes on our nations highways.

 

Contrast that with political leaders (of both parties) who look at themselves as heroes.  Some have fought for our country as members of the military and deserve our respect for that.  However few have distinguished themselves in the political arena in a way even remotely classifying themselves as heroes.

 

I was on a flight this weekend in the Pacific Northwest, leaving Seattle, on this flight was a young man on his way home for two weeks from Iraq.  Now being the Pacific Northwest, an area not known for respecting members of our military, I had not expected anyone to notice or say much to this man but was pleasantly surprised.  As we were making our decent the flight attendant leaned over and told the man “thank you for your service and all you do” as I got off the plane I patted his shoulder and said thank you to a man I don’t know, who is home for two weeks with his family before he returns to a battle in a far away place.

 

As we take our vacations, long weekends, days with family, etc this summer please remember that somewhere in a far away place there are real heroes who wake up every day helping to secure not only our freedom but the freedom of people in other countries who aspire to have it but are not strong enough on there own to achieve it.  For they are today’s heroes….