Who Are Your Heroes? Here Are A Few Of Mine

I have a Pinterest account on the Internet. Like many other women, I’ve filled it with photos of pretty gardens, titles of my favorite books and interesting places that I’ve seen.

A while ago, I decided to create a new section, a place for people I admire. I tagged it “My Heroes.”

I pinned a photograph of Corrie ten Boom, a Dutch woman who is believed to have helped nearly 800 people escape the Nazi Holocaust during World War II.

Then I added Raoul Wallenberg, a Swedish diplomat who rescued thousands of Jews in Nazi-occupied Hungary; and finally I pinned a photograph of Malala Yousafzia, the young Pakistani student who is an activist for girls’ education. She has been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize this year.

Recently, I decided to add a photograph that’s closer to home.

It’s a picture of a person holding a rosary and a sign that says “Pray to End Abortion.”

I took it a couple of years ago for a story about the national Forty Days for Life campaign. Volunteers give an hour of their time, and walk and pray in front of Planned Parent offices across the country. They do this in the spring and fall each year.

The local office is on my way to work at the Catholic Center, and even on the coldest days the faithful were there carrying their signs. When it was raining, they wore raincoats; and when it was chilly, they were bundled up.

They walked on the sidewalk next to a very busy Evansville street, and they almost could see the whites in the eyes of the drivers who passed them. Drivers often gave them a “thumbs up” as they passed; once in a great while they showed their disdain.

This spring, the volunteers were out again. Cold days, rainy days, they were there. Often you could see the rosary beads they were carrying.

I thought a lot about them as I drove by early in the morning, and I thought about their courage.

Our Bible offers supportive words about courage. Deuteronomy 31 tells us, “Be strong and courageous. Do not fear or be in dread . . . for it is the Lord your God who goes with you. He will not leave you or forsake you.”

As Catholics we hear a clear message from our Church: we are pro-life from conception to natural death.

Corrie ten Boom and Raoul Wallenberg lived their lives that way.

The ten Boom family members could have turned away and only thought about their own survival during World War II; but they chose to create a safe room in their home, which held up to six people at a time, all standing as still as possible to avoid detection.

Wallenberg could have lived the soft, cushy life of a diplomat, but he chose to immerse himself into the ugliness of the Nazi deportation of the Jews. He issued protective passports that identified Jewish Hungarians as Swedish subjects, preventing their deportation to concentration camps. He also rented 32 buildings in Budapest, and declared that they were protected by diplomatic immunity. At one point, they housed nearly 10,000 people.

Both ten Boom and Wallenberg were courageous beyond measure.

It’s impossible to know what their impact was on the world, just as it’s impossible to know what will come out of the actions of the courageous people who stand out in the snow and rain and wind and pray for an end to abortion.