Where I Stand — Brian Greenspun: Worthy of hero status

Friday, Nov. 2, 2001 | 8:53 a.m.

Brian Greenspun is editor of the Las Vegas Sun.

WE KNOW ABOUT HEROES.

We know about so many people who became heroes in New York in the wake of the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center. We also know about so many more heroes who died there on Sept. 11. And we now know for certain the difference between those we once thought were heroes before that fateful day and those who rightly deserve to share that accolade.

That doesn't mean, of course, that real heroes didn't exist prior to last month. There have been thousands and thousands of them. We have them right here in Las Vegas. Jim Rogers is one of them.

Last Sunday the Clark County Public Education Foundation honored Mr. Rogers with the 2001 Education Hero Award. He is a most deserving recipient.

For too long in this country we have allowed our children to grow up believing that heroes wore athletic uniforms and earned millions of dollars. Not that there haven't been some heroic stories attached to some pretty incredible athletes, but even those upon whom our children conferred such status would be among the first to criticize the choice. It took a horrific tragedy to make us understand the nature of heroism and refocus us on the meaning of the word.

But before we go too far in the other direction -- toward defining the word only by acts of bravery in the face of personal danger -- we must remember that heroes come in all shapes and sizes and for any manner of activity in the service to our fellow man.

Being a leader in the effort to educate America's young people can also lead to hero status. That is the path that led the Public Education Foundation to honor Jim Rogers.

I have a bias. Mr. Rogers is a lawyer and is a very successful leader in the communications industry. I am also a lawyer and aspire to a similar position in the media business. There the similarities end, because Jim has taken a lifelong passion for learning and teaching others and converted it into a generosity of spirit that few are ever privileged enough to attain.

It was for this commitment to others in the pursuit of learning that Jim was named the Hero for 2001. And while I believe Jim was truly moved by this wonderful honor, I suspect that he could have named a dozen others in this community who he believed were more deserving. But that's not what Gov. Kenny Guinn said when he spoke to the room packed full of educators and community leaders; to Kenny, there was no one more deserving. And that isn't what Bill Martin said about his longtime friend. Or what Sig Rogich or County Commissioner Erin Kenny told the crowded room about the honoree. Suffice it to say that there was little left unsaid about why Jim deserved the hero status conferred upon him.

What I thought was most special, however, was not the accolades that adults share about each other when they are being so honored. The tugs on my emotions were catalyzed by the so very talented young people from the C.V.T. Gilbert Magnet School of the Performing Arts. Had I not known better, I might have thought I was watching a group of professionals on a Broadway stage or even a Las Vegas stage!

Dressed just like people in our neighborhood, the kids followed the theme of another Mr. Rogers as they sang their way into our hearts. We were allowed to sit in our chairs in the audience where our tears of joy and pride were not so evident. Las Vegas' Mr. Rogers was not as lucky. He sat on a stool with a Mr. Rogers sweater while the kids sang to him, about him and for him, their voices like those of angels charged with a confidence very few possess. That stage belonged to each and every one of those talented young children as did every heart in the room.

Mr. Rogers, of course, wasn't spared. His tears flowed for the whole world to see. And when he spoke to us about his life, the efforts of his mother to teach not only her children but the community's children through a lifetime as a Clark County teacher, we knew that the Public Education Foundation had chosen well.

Is Jim a real hero? If you hold him or any of us up against those firemen and policemen who marched into the burning World Trade Center to rescue their fellow human beings, knowing there was a good chance they wouldn't march out, then perhaps he wouldn't measure up. And if you use the kind of yardstick that measures the bravery of our young men and women who are jumping into the dead of night in Afghanistan to rid the world of the scourge called bin Laden and his henchmen, then, perhaps, he might fall a bit short.

But if you look at the totality of his life -- the efforts he has made to further the education of all children in this community and in others; the commitment of financial resources, the amount of which most people can only dream about and never achieve, let alone give away; the steadfastness of purpose when expressing his belief in the proper course for his community to take as it has grown to maturity when a different course would have been an easier path -- then it is easy to see why the Public Education Foundation made him its hero.

He is a good choice. It is good for Las Vegans that Mr. Jim Rogers lives in our neighborhood.