Throughout our nation’s history, the United States has often experienced great moments of national crisis. But no matter how deep the sea, how dark the sky, or how black the night, America always had a hero step forward during these moments of crisis.
In the bitter cold and despair of Valley Forge, the battle for American independence appeared to be nearly lost. However, Gen. Washington would lead his troops in a decisive victory at Trenton.
When the troops were stalled by the German guns in Europe, Alvin York decided that he must silence those guns and began a desperate flanking movement.
When America needed steel to become the economic powerhouse that it would eventually become, Andrew Carnegie risked everything to produce it.
When a nation coming out of a war was trying to find a way to unite all of its citizens, of every color, Branch Rickey signed a young man named Jackie Robinson to play for the Brooklyn Dodgers.
When our embassy in Tehran had fallen, when 52 Americans had been held captive for 444 days, and the U.S. was mired in an economic recession, President Ronald Reagan showed that even an assassin’s bullet wouldn’t keep him from making the country strong again.
America’s heroes have often been scouts, trail blazers, discoverers, or pioneers, leading us across a continent or to the vast reaches of the moon. Many of our heroes have been soldiers and generals, lifting us from bitter moments of defeat to great and often-unforeseen military victories.
And despite much of the Left’s insane hatred for them now, a number of our heroes were great industrialists, supplying the ingenuity and the materials to help our nation grow.
Our heroes have been scientists and doctors, discovering the cures for disease and increased production of crops.
Our heroes have been inventors, lighting our world, producing the machines that reap our crops, and would carry us on the nation’s highways.
And some of our heroes used to come from the world of politics, men who longed to serve others with little thought for how their actions might enrich their own power.
Oftentimes, our heroes have been the unknown or unheralded, dying in lonely battlefields, laboring in obscurity, or simply trying to make the way better for those who would later follow them.
