This is the first Campfires Tales article and it was published in the GUNS Magazine September 2001 issue.
Once upon a time in this country, young men looked up to certain individuals with great admiration. These were not sports stars, Hollywood celebrities or musicians putting on a façade of respectability.
These were people who had faced real danger or adversity and triumphed through the strength of their character and moral conviction. These people were called heroes.
I believe in heroes, role models, whatever you choose to call them. Who is your hero?
For me, that person is the father I never knew. My dad was killed before I was 1 year old, and I have always wondered why. Coincidentally, his own father had been killed just before he was born, so he never saw his father either. What might my life have been like if this had not happened? Would it have been the same or totally different? It would be wonderful to be able to talk to him. But that is only wishful thinking.
My dad would have been a hero — or at least I like to think so. At the time he was killed, he owned a deer rifle, a shotgun, a .22 rifle and several fishing poles, so he must have been an all-right guy. His older brothers and sisters always told me what a grand man he was. But I will never know.
My step-dad was a hero too, although I did not realize it until much later. Mom remarried in 1942 and my new dad was too old to be drafted so he enlisted, went off to war, was wounded in action and spent 18 months as a prisoner of war. He had no education, dropping out of school at the age of 10 to go to work with his father in the coal mines. In spite of his lack of skills, he always had a job and he always took good care of me.
He was not a hunter or shooter, but he took me fishing every chance he got. Most importantly, he taught me how to work. I did not really appreciate him until I was out on my own with a family to support. He was part of the “Greatest Generation.” His last wish on this earth was to live out his remaining days in the Veterans’ Home.
My older cousins were also my heroes. They did not have to worry about being drafted either. They were too young so they dropped out of school, lied about their ages and enlisted in the Navy. They, too, were part of the “Greatest Generation.”
I’ve had various other heroes in my life. I was 8 years old when I first saw John Wayne as gunfighter Quirt Evans in “The Angel and the Badman.” He became my hero then and remained so to me in one capacity or another for the rest of his life.
When I used silver dollars from my piggy bank to buy that first edition of “Sixguns by Keith,” I discovered a new hero. He would have a profound effect on my life — he certainly had much to do with my life-long love of big-bore sixguns.
But between John Wayne and Elmer Keith, my all-time hero emerged. I was in grade school at the time, and fortunately had a teacher who forced us to read biographies.
I went through all the easy-reading books on Kit Carson, Wild Bill Hickok, Buffalo Bill and Davy Crockett, but when I got to Theodore Roosevelt, I found my real hero reading “The Boys’ Life of Theodore Roosevelt” by Hermann Hagedorn. The copy of this book which I now own was discarded by the local high school in 1970. Discarded! And it is in great shape. I guess no one reads it anymore. I’m saving it for my oldest grandson, and I keep hoping it will be reprinted so the other two boys can have a copy.
As I first read about Roosevelt’s life I was not too impressed. After all, he came from New York, he was sickly as a boy, and the story seemed to be going nowhere. Then I came to the part where “the doctor told him he had heart trouble, that he must choose a profession with no violent exertion, that he must take no vigorous exercise, that he must not even run upstairs.”
So what did Roosevelt do? He went to Europe and climbed the Matterhorn! This was a man! For the rest of his time on earth, he stressed the strenuous life. While other boys in my high school class were reading “I The Jury,” “Blackboard Jungle” and “Hot Rod magazine,” I was reading Roosevelt’s “African Game Trails” and “Hunting Trips of a Ranchman.”
At a time when I needed a real hero, Roosevelt filled the bill quite nicely. Even today I sub-scribe to the Theodore Roosevelt Classics Library, getting a new volume every month. They, too, will go to the grandsons some day.
Where are the Theodore Roosevelts today? I cannot think of anyone on the national scene who I consider a hero or role model. Yes there are many unknown local heroes that we may look to, but nationally?
Making millions of dollars for the ability to throw, pass, kick or shoot a ball does not make a “sports hero” — whatever that is — although there are sports figures who do a lot of good away from the playing field.
I was relieved when my middle grandson reached the age of 10 and decided the celebrities of the WWF were not really heroes, role models, nor even worth watching anymore. “Celebrity” has become nearly synonymous with “hero” in the minds of millions of people who don’t realize how far apart those two concepts really are.
I can’t be John Wayne, or Elmer Keith, or Theodore Roosevelt. None of us can. But I can be a real hero where it really counts: with my kids and grandkids. So can you.
We have gone from the Greatest Generation to the Baby Boomers to what today could easily be labeled as the Fatherless Generation. Society is paying a large price for the lack of heroes today and the overabundance of poor role models. Somehow this must be changed.
If shooting and hunting are to survive —more importantly if society as we know it, what is left of it, is to survive — we desperately need role models for kids, and especially for boys.
We need teachers that will be real role models for kids who have none. We need men who will serve as substitute fathers and grandfathers where there are none.
A century from now the words I’ve written, where I lived, how much money I made, even the sixguns I shot and enjoyed, will not make one bit of difference. But the time I spend with kids may very well make a great deal of difference. The most important thing a man can do is to be a father and grandfather worthy of admiration.
That is the job of a real hero.