Heroes for My Son (9 page)

Foster mother. Harlem resident. The heart of Hale House.

 

 

S
he started with the foster kids, raising forty of them, eight at a time, in her Harlem residence.

At sixty-three years of age, Clara Hale thought she was done.

Then came the drug-addicted mother with the two-year-old falling from her arms. Clara couldn't refuse.

Soon, twenty-two infants of drug-addicted parents were in Clara's five-room apartment.

 

City officials weren't impressed. Despite her 90 percent success rate, they tried to shut her down.

 

It didn't stop Hale House. Or Clara.

 

People started sending their own money—like the Englishman who called, looking for the “old lady of Harlem.” It was John Lennon. He gave her $10,000.

 

Clara kept taking them in: children born addicted to crack, those dying of AIDS, the ones no one else wanted.

 

When she died at eighty-seven, Clara had helped raise almost one thousand children of every race and ethnicity.

 

She didn't have money.

She didn't have power.

Clara Hale had love.

It was endless.
*

Boxer. Prognosticator. Personality.

 

 

N
o one floated faster.

 

No one stung harder.

 

No one taunted louder.

 

And no one—black or white, activist or athlete—brought more beauty, grace, or personality.

 

But what made him the greatest?

 

He never—
ever
—apologized for being who he was.
*

President.

 

 

W
hat do you call the son of a Kenyan economist and a girl from Kansas?

 

A black boy raised by white grandparents in a cramped two-bedroom apartment in Hawaii?

 

A rebellious student who scooped ice cream at Baskin-Robbins?

 

An idealistic college graduate searching to make a difference?

 

A law professor still struggling to make peace with the memory of his father?

 

A senator who favored the power of
hope
, igniting generations of believers?

 

You call him proof that, in America, anyone can be president.
*

Author of To Kill a Mockingbird.

 

 

S
he didn't think the story was there.

 

Five years after starting, she was convinced her novel wasn't worth a damn.

 

Maybe she should've become a lawyer after all.

 

It was then that she threw open her window and tossed the manuscript out, scattering it in the filthy snow.

 

In a fit, Harper Lee called her editor Tay Hohoff. No one knows what Hohoff said to her.

 

But when Harper Lee hung up, she went outside, gathered the pages, and saved the manuscript.

 

She revised and revised and revised—until
To Kill a Mockingbird
was ready.
*

According to the Library of Congress,
To Kill a Mockingbird
is second only to the Bible in being most often cited as making a difference in people's lives.

It is the only novel Harper Lee ever published.

Author of the Declaration of Independence. Thinker. Statesman. President.

 

 

F
or seventeen days, the thirty-three-year-old secluded himself in a rented room in Philadelphia.

 

On a small, portable desk, he began writing, laying the foundations of this new American government. Unlike every nation before it, this country's heart would not beat with the blood of royal lines. This would be a nation based on ideals.

 

It took Thomas Jefferson seventeen days to find the right words. Seventeen days of writing and rewriting before he nervously presented his document to John Adams and Benjamin Franklin.

 

The Declaration of Independence became the greatest decree in Western civilization.

 

Jefferson could've easily taken credit for writing it. But he never bragged about his accomplishment. Even when he was elected president, most Americans never knew he was the author of their independence.

In fact, his authorship didn't become common knowledge until years later after his death.

Because to Jefferson, the Declaration of Independence was written not just
for
all of America, but
by
all of America. It was the manifestation of a new nation and a new mind.

 

He was merely the messenger.
*

Spiritual leader. Political icon. Pacifist.

 

 

O
ne day, you will fight.

 

So how should you fight?

 

With your fists? With threats? With words? With weapons?

 

They all work. They've been tested—successfully—for centuries.

 

But to fight by purposely avoiding violence?

 

To refuse to raise your fist, no matter what is raised against you?

 

Some would call that
lunacy
.

 

Madness
.

 

But what it really is, is
courage
.
*