doityourselfheroes草根英雄.docVIP

Do-it-yourself Heroes By Nancy Gibbs Human beings have always created the heroes we need, from Hercules and Sherlock Holmes-whose supernatural gifts let them conquer mighty foes-to Underdog and Ugly Ducking-whose transformations were themselves acts of heroism. Right now, when the headlines clang with catastrophe and confusion, it’s natural that we’d be at it again, searching for heroes to suit the times. First there was Captain Chesley(Sully) Sullen Berger ,walking the length of his sinking plane to be sure every last passenger was safely off. The came Captain Richard Phillips, battling pirates in angry seas. Finally there’s Susan Boyle, the unemployed church lady whose dying mother had told her to chase her ridiculous dreams of musical stardom. Any one of them could be your Uncle Oliver or Aunt Florence, living lives innocent of fame until faced with a sudden test. Not much chance to prepare, other than a lifetime spent becoming themselves. Sully had 19000 hours of flight time; he flew gliders as a hobby, and tow master’s degrees, studied crisis psychology to learn how to keep a crew on task in a emergency. “Me and my crew, we were just doing our job,” he told the President, who had called to congratulated him. Phillips, a former Boston cabdriver, didn’t have any weapons to take on the pirates with, so he tried to trade himself for the pirates his crew had captured. But the pirates decided he was more valuable and held him hostage for five days, until the Navy SEAL snipers performed the Easter miracle that rescued him. “What they did was impossible,” he said of the SEALs. “They are superheroes.” Which is what his crew said about him. And then there is Boyle, the youngest of nine children, deprived of oxygen at birth, bullied in school, living what seemed an airless life with her cat, Pebbles. When she auditioned for a TV talent show in 1995-in the age of arrogance and affluence-she was scorned. So she sang karaoke at the pub and cared for her ailing m