The Meaning of Heroes

[James Kilbourne]

The Meaning of Heroes

by James Kilbourne

“Jimmy, I want to see you for a moment.” So my sister Jean called me into her room on the afternoon of October 7, 1959, a few months after my fifteenth birthday. At first I thought it was a joke of some kind. My family starts off some of its funniest observations by first appearing to be very serious; then you get the punch line. “Someone very close to you has died.” The way she had worded it, I knew it wasn’t a joke and it wasn’t someone in the immediate family, for she would have said “us” instead of “you”. “I just heard on the radio that Mario Lanza died in Italy today.” I had never met Mario Lanza, nor had I seen him in a concert. I had seen only two of his films, “Serenade” and “The Seven Hills of Rome”, but I had spent endless hours listening to his music and the world of opera to which he had introduced me. Jean, as did everyone else who knew me well, realized that he was more than just a singer for whom I had great admiration. Mario Lanza was, to me, a bigger-than-life hero.

I knew something about loss at that age. When I was seven years old, my father had called me into the living room early on the morning of April 27, 1952, to tell me that my mother “was in heaven.” I had turned and raced upstairs crying, and had fallen into the protective arms of my weeping grandmother. I am not saying that the loss of a hero compares in any way with the trauma of the loss of my mother on that cold April morning, but these are the two times most burned into my memory on hearing about someone’s death.

I am and always have been a crier. I cry when I am sad. I cry when I am happy. I cry when I am emotionally overwhelmed, but I didn’t cry when Jean gave me the news that day. I don’t remember even wanting to cry. I felt more like it was the world’s loss; that it wasn’t mine personally. All I remember is saying something to the effect that it was a great tragedy, for there were so many things he was going to do in the world of opera. My first thought was that it was a tragedy for the world of music, for Mario Lanza was about to bring the world of opera to a glorious new level. Later, as I read more about this talented and tortured man, I realized that anything but an unfulfilled career and early death would have been a miracle.

Jean was sensitive and supportive in her attempts to soften the blow of this news, but I was stunned and wanted to be alone to think through all that this meant to me. I felt that in some very profound way everything had changed, and I had better try to start the process of understanding how.

Today, if you want to know something about Mario Lanza, you go to your computer and Google his name. I just did it, and received 355,000 references, which cover everything I am sure from books about his career and art to every recording he ever made and, probably somewhere, his mother’s recipe for lasagna. It is hard to describe to someone who didn’t live during the 1950’s what a different world it was then; how difficult it was to get information on almost any subject. Lanza’s earlier movies and recordings were not available anywhere. All I knew of his previous career was what I had come upon by chance, and what people who had seen or heard earlier performances and recordings told me.

My early teen years were times of great dreams and discoveries. If something interested me, I had a voracious appetite to know everything about it. Egyptian, Greek and Roman history had led me to the time of the American Revolution, and I read everything I could find on these subjects. Baseball was an all-consuming passion, and I knew Mickey Mantle’s batting average for every year he had played for the New York Yankees since he came up in 1951. Not just that, but I also knew how many home runs, rbi’s, and hits he had had each year. My room was plastered with pictures, under which I placed a homemade sign, reading “Twelve Promenent Yankees” in my most careful handwriting. My merciless brother teased me about my spelling of “prominent”, but impatience with calligraphy far outweighed my embarrassment over my inability to spell accurately, so there it remained for years, with an “i” neatly written in over the “e”. Mickey had the central place of honor, of course.

My future was obvious to me, and it was going to be a straight line from that moment to my dying breath. I was to be the greatest baseball player ever, a switch hitter and centerfielder like Mickey, and I would study singing and would burst upon the world of opera during the off seasons to become its greatest star. The brilliant, revisionist volumes of history that I would write were dreams of my later teens, but these were only going to be written to fill the void left when my baseball career and my international singing career succumbed to the ravages of aging.

Between the ages of about ten to fifteen, I would wake up at 6:00AM every morning and walk down to the end of my street where there was a little gas station, the first store of about five that made up Hingham Center in my hometown of Hingham, Massachusetts. They also sold newspapers (and five and ten cent ice cream cones, by the way), which had been delivered shortly before I got there. The bundle of papers, banded together in metal in those days, was on the front step. I would carefully twist and slide one copy loose from the tightly bundled stack, so as not to rip the precious treasure. The sports page was in the back section. I would sit on the stoop, gingerly opening this section, go to the Yankee box score, and check to see what Mickey Mantle had done the previous day. If he had had a couple of hits, it was a good day for me. If he had hit a home run and the Yankees had won, it was a great day. I would then walk back home, after lining up my payment of three pennies on the cement step for the owner to find at his sleepy arrival time of 6:30AM.

My village center didn’t have a record store, so I would walk to Woody’s Record Store in downtown Hingham, the better part of a mile away, or, perhaps, a couple of miles in the opposite direction to another little store in Weymouth Center. Often, I would do both in the same day. If I came upon a single 45rpm of Lanza or maybe a few Rachmaninoff preludes, I would bring it the record home and play it over and over until it was thoroughly memorized. And then I would play it over and over again just to be sure. News seldom reached me beforehand about a pending album in those days, so if a Lanza 33rpm appeared suddenly in the window of my local record stores, a religious holiday was declared, and all other plans were dropped for that day and several to follow. I remember that after playing it continuously for myself, as well as the willing, the intimidated and the immobile around me, I would bring the album upstairs to my bedroom at night and carefully prop it up on my bureau, so that it would be the last thing I saw at night and the first thing I saw in the morning. My God! What a joy my romantically obsessive nature was to my grandmother and perhaps a few others, but what a pain I must have been to the rest of humanity. But, these were magic times, and I love to remember them. I couldn’t discover enough about the many things I loved and I hated to have to go to sleep at night. What a waste of precious hours!

One of the most important things to know about a person is who are his heroes. As an adult your heroes reflect your values and your sense of life. This is equally true for a child, but heroes also help him to form the man that he will become. An adult without a hero is sad to witness; a child without a hero is a lifelong tragedy in the making. Mickey Mantle was a quiet, shy young man who struggled with injuries, but still managed to be one of the great baseball players of his era. He was famous for striking out a lot, but also for hitting tape measure home runs. Recently, my great friend Chris Sciabarra sent me a wonderful documentary about Mantle’s life. It ends with an older and very sick Mickey telling the world not to lead a life of drinking and self-destruction, as he had. There was something magnificent and noble in the simple honesty of Mickey in his last days; something more profound than his greatest sports achievements. Decency and self-honesty are greater things for a hero to leave to his fans than memories of athletic prowess.

People always thought that these two men were an odd pair to have as heroes, but I never thought it strange. They both had amazing talent and even greater potential. They both made me feel that the world was there to revel in and be conquered at the same time. Part of the magic was what they accomplished- and part of it was that they always left you expecting much greater things to come. As an adult, it is vital to stay in touch with the heroes of your childhood. I remember my exact emotional reaction to some songs over fifty years ago, and often experience the identical feeling today when I play them. The boy I used to be is no stranger to the man I have become.

When my sister told me of Lanza’s death, I knew that there was going to be a big change in my life from that moment on. I now see that my dreams of how great and important life could be started to switch from the accomplishments of my heroes to the reality of how I would lead my own life. Through a slow and relentless process, the hopes I had of basking in the glory of the future conquests of my heroes became a large part of who I am today. Mickey Mantle was mostly a boyhood dream, but I can still see what I loved about him. Mario Lanza has remained a constant companion to this day. In my personal life, I have found the love I dreamed of when his songs helped me build those dreams over fifty years ago. Now I have united the dream and the reality of love. I feel as if my life is as big as he helped me believe it could be, and I can make every day in the future even better. Who could ask for more from a hero?

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

James,

It is wonderful seeing you post an article here. Who would have thought your first subject on OL would be an inspiring article on Mario Lanza? (I'm biting my tongue...)

LOLOLOLOLOLOL...

(OK, OK, Michey Mantle, too.)

I need to get into more Lanza. He swoops up to high notes and I have had a pretty strong preconception against that practice over the years. Still, I don't want to say anything that will somehow diminish the kind of enjoyment you write about. So, instead of me acting snobbish and putting on airs, give me some time and I will listen to him more carefully.

My warmest greetings to Sergio.

Michael

[Barbara Branden]

"The boy I used to be is no stranger to the man I have become." I am convinced that this is a very important connection for all of us to make -- the connection between who we were and who we are.

Some time after my break with Ayn Rand, I began to feel that there was very little connection between the young girl I used to be before I met her, and the person I became during my years with her – and that feeling was extremely painful. It was only when I finally came to understand in what way the values that had brought me to Objectivism, had kept me there for almost nineteen years, and had, finally, led me to leave Rand, were the identical values, basically, that I had held throughout my childhood and adolescence, that I was able to make my peace with those nineteen years. We have a need to see our lives as an unbroken continuum, which I believe they are – even though, at times, they may not seem so. We don’t jump out of our skins. We may make major changes in our lives, but those changes are driven by values that are rock-solid somewhere deep within our psyches.

[James Kilbourne]

Yes, it is strange that I would put in an article about Lanza again. I wrote this by reconstructing a piece that I had planned to submit to the Lanza group at Yahoo, so it was half written several months ago. Actually, if Lanza is scooping you are listening to some of his really worst recordings,- probably from the mid fifties. His most common vocal mistakes generally came from getting overly excited...pushing and going sharp. Send me your address and I will send you a surprise...

[James Kilbourne]

I think the worst damage we can do to ourselves is to break the emotional thread of our lives and the best therapy we can achieve is to mend the break.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

James,

Well I don't care if it was about Lanza. I am very happy you did the article. Also, I feel a bit like a klutz for not going into the emotional truths you wrote about.

I had a heroine over 30 years ago. (Still do.) She just pointed out those truths.

I am going to do some thinking about that phrase, "emotional thread."

Address coming off line.

Michael

[Roger Bissell]

James and Barbara, I appreciate very much what you have said in the followup comments to James' essay.

The issue of preserving or repairing one's "emotional thread" is very, very important. It points to a kind of integrity, but it is deeper and more vital even than moral integrity. It is a more primitive form of psychic or personal unity -- kind of similar to self-acceptance (as more primitive in relation to self-esteem). I haven't read Nathaniel's Six Pillars recently or carefully enough to know if he goes into this. If he has not, it would be a good topic for him to do a book on.

It occurs to me that this personal integrity or continuity of one's "emotional thread" sounds a whole lot like sense of life. Sense of life and sense of self are correlates, and either one or both can be damaged if you go off course emotionally and morally. I think I spent the better part of 20 years mangling my "emotional thread," and I've spent the past 15 years carefully repairing it. Thanks to Al-Anon, my wife Becky, the computer, Chris Sciabarra, and the Internet (to name the 5 probably most important factors), I'm feeling fairly well together these days.

It also occurs to me that two of the things I wanted most when I was a boy, but didn't have, was an affectionate family and enough books so that I'd never run out of stuff to read. Whatever other aspirations I've had to let go over the years, I've managed to satisfy those two particular goals in spades. Even after two broken marriages, I have four grown-up kids, two grown-up step-kids, and an 11 year old who all have hugs and "I love you"'s for me, and that feels damn nice. And between Amazon.com and Borders, I'm continuing to fill up our apartment with things to read...some day. :-)

Well, it felt good to say that. Thanks for "listening."

Lots of love, all

REB

[James Kilbourne]

Thank you, Michael. I await your thoughts on "emotional thread". I have used it a few times the past year or so, and like it better as time goes by. Roger, your story is most interesting and your response very thought- provoking. So often I see people who have been damaged as children fight their whole lives just to get to a starting line, emotionally. It breaks my heart, on occasion, to see what good people have to go through to feel whole again. In many ways, I think people are making improvements in providing a better and more consistent background for self-awareness and expression for their children.

[Charles R. Anderson]

James,

First, I want to compliment you on the quality of your writing. I enjoyed this article on that level and I have generally found enjoyment in your other notes as well. You are a fine craftsman.

While I have never been a great fan of opera, my wife loves it. Like you, I love reading history and it was my real reason for becoming interested in school. I learned to read late and it was history that finally gave me reason to want to read. I loved the heroes of history especially, at first John Paul Jones, Chief Black Hawk, Kit Carson, Rogers of Rogers' Rangers, etc. A little later I added Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, and Thomas Edison. I also played baseball as my primary sport until we moved to RI when I was in the 7th grade. I would often play baseball for 3 hours a day in the summers. My 5th birthday was 27 April 1952, so we have a kind of anti-polar connection on that day.

[Charles R. Anderson]

James, Barbara, and Roger,

There seem to be at least two kinds of people who think of themselves as Objectivists. I, and I suspect James, did not experience as sharp a discontinuity in my life as I became an Objectivist as do many Objectivists. While my parents were religious and they were temporarily very angry with me, I never lost sight of my appreciation for having been raised in a loving home, having been given responsibilities early on, and having proven that I was responsible having been given great freedom early on. I was encouraged to think and to think for myself. We talked about politics and foreign affairs at home. When my father had his Navy friends or other friends over, I frequently joined in the discussions. My father never got a degree, but he was always taking college and graduate courses. My parents always provided me with many books and took me to the library when I wanted to go there. I was encouraged to work hard at school, but not really pushed. I did the pushing. I had a wonderful childhood and I have always loved my parents and my sisters and brother for it. After a momentary shock with my being an atheist, my family got over it and we are still close. It is a very disrupting thing to lose such an important connection to who you were, as was noted above.

Some Objectivists become Objectivists because it can be used as a marvelously wicked tool for criticizing and putting down virtually everyone else. This must have a great appeal for some people who had an unhappy childhood. It is easy to craft Objectivism into a tool that makes the good people wicked and the wicked people monsters. If we allow ourselves to do this then we cut ourselves off from our families, our old friends, and most people in the communities in which we live. Some distancing from many people is inevitable as an Objectivist, but we should not aggravate it and relish it.

There are many good people who are not nearly perfect. Our perfect ideals as Objectivists should not force us to be the enemy of the good because it is not perfect. If we allow ourselves to go down this path, we not only do an injustice to many of the people close to us in our earlier life, but we also do an injustice to the self who had sufficiently good qualtities that we could understand the good and the truth of Objectivism. Not everyone does. Oftentimes, the few who do owe their family some proper gratitude for helping them to make themselves able to do so.

[James Kilbourne]

Charles,

Thank you for your kind words about my writing. I have certainly enjoyed your posts here, and think you express yourself with art and great clarity, something not all that common these days..

Although you have never been an opera fan, I see by the fact that you were 5 years old in 1952 that this is completely understandable-you are still just a kid (you see, I was 8 in 1952). There is still time to repent. Luckily, you have an obviously brilliant wife (who does love opera), so your recovery program and salvation are all but assured, if you also continue to read my humble operatic articles as well, of course.

I, too, fell in love with history as a child (right after the Hopalong Cassidy and Roy Rogers era), falling for ancient Egyptian history first, then Rome, then Greece (I was chronologically challenged, I guess), before settling on the American Revolution as a lifetime passion. I see George Washington as history's greatest statesman/politician, with none being close. What a crime that he is basically unknown these days. A crime, but not a surprise. He spent his life developing his character and his reputation (which, in his definition of it, is a much higher goal than what we currently think of with that word). Character and reputation are sorely missing in our culture, although the strongest examples of it in modern history are surely Reagan and GWB. (How GWB sprung from GHWB, yet emulated RWR will be a best selling book someday).

Following Washington, the power of a great author to bring his subject alive is the reason that I consider John Adams at least on a level with Thomas Jefferson. The author is David McCullough and his book "John Adams" is an awesome accomplishment.

I, too, expect that I will have funded a James G. Kilbourne Memorial Wing on some Amazon warehouse someday.

[Charles R. Anderson]

James,

It may be slightly redeeming that I love taking Anna to an opera. She enjoys it so much that it gives me great pleasure to see her enjoy it. I also enjoy the opera directly, but I am inclined to prefer classical instrumental music or vocal music in English for listening purposes. I need the visual aspect of the opera for it to reach its greater glory, especially since I am severely challenged in understanding other languages.

My favorite American history has for a long time been centered on the American Revolution, the years leading to it, and the years following in which we established our form of government and our Constitution. George Washington was clearly an incredibly great man. Today, he is awfully and very unjustly underestimated. Without his effort, we would not have achieved our freedom from Britain. Without his effort, we very likely would have failed much sooner in realizing the limited government we maintained for quite a while. By the way, I also think it is disgraceful that the work of Nathaniel Greene and Gouverneur Morris and many others is also not appreciated. I greatly enjoyed the David McCullough John Adams. On the war itself, I really enjoyed the old 2 volume work by Lord. It is time for me to read that again soon.

The next favorite part of American history is that related to the expansion of industry. There is much more to that story than most people realize.

My daughters often complained about having to share a house with 4,000 books. I just cannot throw a book away or even give it away if I have invested enough of myself into it to read it or if I have not yet found the time to read it. I admit that I hope that my eyesight will be good when I am 80 so I can use a good part of my time to read the many books I have not yet gotten to! I find it is a good thing to read history written in our present, but also an interesting exercise to read the history written in earlier times. The history written in earlier times helps to explain the choices people made in those times and sometimes the truth has passed from fashion and new mythologies have taken their place. Sometimes old mythologies are revealed in new works. This is a dynamic issue and a two-way street.

It seems that as men created mythological heroes and mythological gods and religions, so too do they create mythological history. The fact that some are creating a mythology of Ayn Rand is a piece with this history.

The importance of knowing history for making wise judgments about current political issues is sadly and tragically misunderstood by most Americans today. Far too many have opinions uninformed by a knowledge of history. It is no accident that you and I share a different view of the current political issues than do most of our fellow Objectivists and countrymen.

You are very interesting man, James.

[Charles R. Anderson]

How could I have forgotten Hoppy? Hopalong Cassidy was my great cowboy hero when I was 5 and 6. Roy Rogers and the Lone Ranger were OK, but nothing like Hoppy.

[James Kilbourne]

And with my silver hair (what there is of it), I have become William Boyd....

[Charles R. Anderson]

Then we share the silver hair, such as there is.

His good humor, optimism, benevolence, and love of the good all greatly appealed to me and influenced me forever. At that age, my father and Hopalong were probably my greatest influences. From the 7th through the 10th grades, the Rev. Gordon Stenning joined them. He was a very good man, whose religion was so much more rational than Christianity is generally that he greatly delayed my understanding of the problems of religion. He did provide a very good role model of what a man should be, however. They remain among my greatest heroes.

It is a good thing to have heroes you admire in history and to have several you have known in life.

[Charles R. Anderson]

Reading the above essay by James Kilbourne reminded me that he had written some essays available in the archives of Rebirth of Reason. I had read a couple and enjoyed them. I went back to look them over and found that I had read only a few of them. I want to recommend that those not familiar with these essays should take a look at them. In particular, I really like the essay Free to Live Life. James ends his first paragraph with:

We were told it is the soul of man that thrives in the collective, but this proved to be the greatest lie of all.  The freeing of the individual and his or her consequent development is the greatest story of the capitalist revolution.  It is with the development of capitalism that we have escaped from the banality of the collective and have been able to explore -- to the greatest extent in humankind's history -- the full potential of what it means to be human."

James discusses the effects of Capitalism on the freedom to choose where to live, the choice of work, freedom of association, ability to pursue better physical health, the use and availability of leisure time, and the freedom to develop intellectually. His discussion clarifies many of the ways Capitalism provides the freedom to explore and develop our own individuality, the humanity of our self.

Such an essay can only be written by a man who has deeply and realistically read and evaluated history. History among young Americans is highly underrated in importance. Without great knowledge of it, they are stripped relatively bare by the claims of the communitarians and socialists. Is this why our schools never do history justice anymore?

[Charles R. Anderson]

Another recommendation from the RoR archives of essays: On Gay Marriage

Like James, I would like to see government recognize that it has no role in marriage, the spiritual bond of people in a union. Government's role is to provide a legal contract for the sharing of assets and certain responsibilities. This is a civil union contract and government should make no pretenses that it is providing more than this to anyone, even a union of one man and one woman. Those who wish a spiritual union may turn to a church, to others who share their philosophy, or simply to one another. All people deserve the same civil union contract or set of contract choices. Government is not to discriminate against any of its citizens on the basis of their religion or philosophical beliefs, on their race, or on their sexuality.

Tell the churches and their religious followers that they will exercise greater control on the spiritual nature of the marriages of their members when people understand that they are going to the church strictly and only for that purpose. Tell them that this separation of church and state is actually for their own good. Afterall, the way politics is heading, without that separation being made more clear, it will not be long before government gets around to regulating the churches. Of course, this is mostly an argument to try to get the religious to give up on controlling who is allowed to enjoy government contracts for civil unions.