My Heroes

Your Hero: Someone You Admire

Describe someone you admire.  Think of this person as someone you see as heroic in an important way.  It might be someone whom you know personally or someone you only know about but have never met.  After you describe him or her, write a sentence or two about what makes this person admirable to you.

My dad and my grandmother never quite saw eye to eye.  Both stubborn and incapable of apologizing, their relationship was strained at best.  To everyone else, it was easy to see how much they were alike.

My grandmother was born to a wealthy landowner family in rural China.  A bright and eager child, she somehow cajoled her father into sending her to school all the way through junior high.  That was unheard of for a girl at the time.  Even so, she could not escape the fate of an arranged marriage with my grandfather, a unambitious son from a well to do government official family.  She was unhappy from the beginning, so when my grandfather’s family left with the Nationalists during the big retreat, she refused to follow.  She left my dad with her brother and went off to school to become a doctor.  As long as I can remember, her small medical office was always full of visitors from the community.  She only took in enough money to support herself, and even though she often yelled at her patients, they loved her for her caring.  When the medical profession became a lucrative one in a society more and more focused on money, my grandmother stood by her original intention of becoming a doctor — to help those in need.  I’ve never met another person who was more principled, and had so much love for the people around her.

My father inherited my grandmother’s passion for learning.  Unfortunately for him, his ancestors’ wealth became a stain that destroyed his hopes for a good education.  Yet he loved learning through books, through people, and just through his own experiences.  When we first moved to the states, my parents could both only find minimum wage jobs.  My dad passed the master electrician exam despite his language barrier, and was eventually able to afford a comfortable living for all of us.  I think more than anything else, he’s just as caring as my grandmother, with the same eagerness to help others.  One of his best friends, now the founder of a medical device company, still recalls when my dad gave him 500 RMB some thirty odd years ago to start his venture.  My dad did not even know him well then, and never asked the money to be repaid, but the small amount gave him a flicker of hope after months of trying to sell his idea.  Similar stories are often told at gatherings whenever we go back to visit China.

Thankfully, the stubbornness from my dad’s side of the family has been alleviated somewhat by my mom’s easy going personality when it got to me.  But there are so many traits from my grandmother and my dad that I admire and would like to follow: their thirst for knowledge that did not subside with age, their responsibility towards their families, their trustworthiness and trust in others, their eagerness to help others without wanting anything in return.  I <3 my heroes!

P.S. I also <3 my mom!  She’s also my hero.  In different way 😛