People – Heroes
Last updated on
Mar 31, 2021
Daryl Davis
Written by Joe Becigneul
Posted to FB on Feb 22, 2021
This Hero added on Mar 10, 2021
Daryl Davis was once an aspiring and successful musician. He had played with Chuck Berry, B.B. King, Jerry Lee Lewis, and Muddy Waters. However, his true claim to fame, the legacy he has forged came in a very different way.
He went out of his way to befriend KKK Grand wizard, Roger Kelly. He spent years building trust between them and laying the foundation of what became a friendship. They broke bread at each other’s tables. They welcomed each other into their homes. Davis even went as far attending Klan rallies as a guest of Kelly.
Most importantly, Davis cultivated an atmosphere of listening. He didn’t hate Kelly because Kelly hated him. Instead he listened to Roger Kelly. And eventually, Kelly started listening to him. This lead to the two realizing they had far more in common than not.
In the end, Kelly denounced his ties to the KKK. So much so, he handed his hood and robe to Daryl Davis.
In total, Davis has seen over 200 klan members walk away from the KKK and hand over their robes and hoods to Daryl. Daryl Davis is a world changer. Replacing hate with love. Because love conquers hate... every time.
Daryl is a real hero. He surely endured many pungent remarks as he attended klan rallies; I imagine the likely insults stung even worse from those in his own community. Surely a couple of wagon loads of crowns await him in heaven for his work, not just in the conversion of the 200 or so that denounced the KKK but in the compounded and exponential nature that love has over evil.
I do not know Daryl, I bet he doesn’t display those robes and hoods as trophies but as symbols of what patience and sacrifice can do to the human condition. I certainly wouldn’t nor do, have what it took for Daryl to stand up against and then to stand up for those that would hate me so much.
My highest respects to you Daryl; you’re a real hero and I salute you!
Just in case you were wondering why 60 Minutes had a hit piece on this Paisan - the Governor of Florida. Anyone who criticizes him - I have a question for you - can you please post your education and service to our country resume so we can put things in perspective?
“Ronald Dion DeSantis" was born on September 14, 1978, in Jacksonville, Florida, the son of Karen (née Rogers) and Ronald DeSantis.[1] He is of Italian descent.[2] His family moved to Orlando, Florida, before relocating to Dunedin, Florida, when he was six years old.[3] In 1991, he was a member of the Little League team from Dunedin National that made it to the Little League World Series in Williamsport, Pennsylvania.[4][5]
Ronald Dion DeSantis
Ronald Dion DeSantis
After graduating from Dunedin High School in 1997, DeSantis attended Yale University. He was captain of Yale's varsity baseball team and joined the Delta Kappa Epsilon fraternity.[5][6] On the Yale baseball team, DeSantis was an outfielder; as a senior in 2001, he had the team's best batting average at .336.[7][8][9][10]
He graduated from Yale in 2001 with a B.A. magna cum laude in history.[11] He then spent a year as a history teacher at the Darlington School.[12] DeSantis then attended Harvard Law School, graduating in 2005 with a Juris Doctor cum laude.[13][14]
DeSantis received his Reserve Naval officer's commission and assignment to the Judge Advocate General's Corps (JAG) in 2004 at the U.S. Naval Reserve Center in Dallas, Texas, while still a student at Harvard Law School. He completed Naval Justice School in 2005. Later that year, he received orders to the JAG Trial Service Office Command South East at Naval Station Mayport, Florida, as a prosecutor. In 2006, he was promoted from lieutenant, junior grade to lieutenant. He worked for the commander of Joint Task Force-Guantanamo (JTF-GTMO), working directly with detainees at the Guantanamo Bay Joint Detention Facility.[15][16][17]
In 2007, DeSantis reported to the Naval Special Warfare Command Group in Coronado, California, where he was assigned to SEAL Team One and deployed to Iraq[18] with the troop surge as the Legal Advisor to the SEAL Commander, Special Operations Task Force-West in Fallujah.[15][16][17]
DeSantis returned to the U.S. in April 2008, at which time he was reassigned to the Naval Region Southeast Legal Service. The U.S. Department of Justice appointed him to serve as an Assistant U.S. Attorney[18] at the U.S. Attorney's Office in the Middle District of Florida. DeSantis was assigned as a trial defense counsel until his honorable discharge from active duty in February 2010. He concurrently accepted a reserve commission as a lieutenant in the Judge Advocate General's Corps of the US Navy Reserve.[19] He was awarded the Bronze Star Medal, the Navy and Marine Corps Commendation Medal, the Global War on Terrorism Service Medal and the Iraq Campaign Medal.[15][16][17”
Audie Murphy
Audie Murphy was the most decorated American combat soldier of WW2, receiving every military combat award for valour available from the United States Army, as well as French and Belgian awards for heroism.
At the age of 19, Audie Murphy received the Medal of Honor after single-handedly holding off an entire company of German soldiers for an hour at the Colmar Pocket in France in January 1945, then leading a successful counter attack while wounded and out of ammunition.
After the war, Audie Murphy had a 21 year acting career. He played himself in the 1955 autobiographical 'To Hell and Back' based on his 1949 memoirs of the same name, but most of his films were westerns. The movie 'To Hell and Back' was a critical and box office success. In fact, it was Universal’s biggest hit until ‘Jaws’.
Suffering from insomnia and recurring nightmares, from what would today be described as post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), he once said that he could sleep only with a loaded pistol under his pillow. In the last few years of his life he was plagued by money problems, but refused offers to appear in alcohol and cigarette commercials because he did not want to set a bad example.
Audie Murphy died in a plane crash in Virginia in 1971 shortly before his 46th birthday, and was interred with full military honours at Arlington National Cemetery.
Sugihara, Chiune
This Hero added on Mar 20, 2021
This man saved 6000 Jews. He was a Japanese diplomat in Lithuania. When the Nazis began rounding up Jews, Sugihara risked his life to start issuing unlawful travel visas to Jews. He hand-wrote them 18 hrs a day. The day his consulate closed and he had to evacuate, witnesses claim he was STILL writing visas and throwing from the train as he pulled away. He saved 6000 lives. The world didn’t know what he’d done until Israel honored him in 1985, the year before he died.
James Stewart
James Stewart was the first movie star to enter the service for World War II, joining a year before Pearl Harbor was bombed.
He was initially refused entry into the Air Force because he weighed 5 pounds less than the required 148 pounds, but he talked the recruitment officer into ignoring the test. He eventually became a Colonel (active duty) and then Brigadier General in the United States Air Force Reserve, and earned the Air Medal, the Distinguished Flying Cross, the Croix de Guerre and 7 battle stars. In 1959, he served in the Air Force Reserve, before retiring as a brigadier general. (Walter Matthau was a sergeant in his unit).
Despite having been a decorated war hero in World War II, he declined to talk about this, in part because of the traumatic experiences he had in killing others and watching friends die. The roles he chose after returning from the war were generally darker, some say because he was hardened by combat. Stewart a dislike of Hollywood war movies, explaining that they were hardly ever accurate.
During his career, he only starred in two war films: "Strategic Air Command" (1955) and "The Mountain Road" (1960).
**I chose to add James to my Hero group as he voluntarily left a cushy life in Hollywood to serve his country and risk his life to protect freedom. Thank you James and the other Hollywoods that did the same.
**I chose to add James to my Hero group as he voluntarily left a cushy life in Hollywood to serve his country and risk his life to protect freedom. Thank you James and the other Hollywoods that did the same.
Timothy S. Williams
This is what a HERO looks like!
Staff Sergeant Timothy S. Williams sprinted 60 meters under fire through open terrain to rescue his team leader after an AK-47 round shattered the Marine’s femur and sent him tumbling into a canal full of water.
SSgt Williams scooped him up, stabilized his leg, then carried the Marine 3 football fields to a medevac chopper. He took charge of the patrol and led the force two miles over mountainous terrain toward friendly forces, killing Taliban the whole way.
For his courage, he was awarded the Silver Star.