Friday Inspiration — Who Are Your Heroes?

Friday’s inspirational thought is this: Who are your heroes? And why are they important to you?

Why are heroes important? They give us reasons to keep trying.

Long before I ever knew I wanted to be a writer, I knew who my heroes were. Henry Aaron. Ernie Banks. Larry Doby. And Jackie Robinson. Men who broke the color line in major league baseball, who dealt with gratuitous insults with grace and dignity.

Oh, I had others, too. Helen Keller, for learning and thriving despite being both blind and deaf. Florence Nightingale, for being willing to nurse the sick and for preaching the importance of proper sanitation. Art Pepper for getting away from heroin and resuming his jazz career in his early fifties…and Benny Goodman, for proving that a strong jazz clarinetist could play Mozart with equal ease.

Those are just a few of my heroes.

So who are your heroes? Why do they matter to you?

And one additional question for my fellow writers out there: How have your heroes factored into your writing?