Heroes

I think there are undoubtedly heroes in modern life.  According to the poem, I think there are; according to me, for sure.  I think that depending on people's interests/geography/ethnicity/race there have been all types of heroes in the recent past and currently.  The person who comes to my mind immediately is Barack Obama.  I think that he is currently millions of people's hero, and will be remembered as one of the prominent figures of our generation, and in history.  One of my best buddies' dad was telling me a story.  He said the day after Obama was sworn into office, he was seeing a patient (he's a doctor) at the beginning of the day who was with her sister, both middle aged and African-American.  They both were just beaming he said, and when he said good morning to them as a kind of greeting, the sister said, "No, it is a great morning."  That really stuck with me.  

He's not a hero just to the African-American population though.  Our family had an exchange student when I was a baby.  For the next 5 years or so he came and lived with us every summer, and we've remained really close; he's like a brother to me.  After Barack was elected, he sent us an e-mail saying how happy he was that the United States elected him, and how Europe was essentially congratulating the United States for being able to do this.  I think it was really a transcendent moment for a lot of people, and our generation, and he really is a hero to so, so many people.  I think he's a hero to a lot of people as well because he showed the world how far our country has come.  It was so significant to me because I think it was the defining moment of my generation, kind of what our generation will be remembered for.  A lot of people in our grandparents' generation were pretty racist, and I think some of that trickled down to our parents' generation.  But I truly believed for a while that our generation is a lot more liberal in a sense, a lot more open-minded.  This is the first decision that our generation swayed, kind of decided for our country.  Instead of electing a wealthy, old white man, we elected a younger African American man.  He's younger, loves talking about sports, and is going to be on Jay Leno's late night show.  I'm not sure if I would say he is my number one personal hero, but definitely a hero.  I'm really proud that he's our president, I know I'm witnessing history, and the fact that he is the man (in the sense that he is just cool; he even filled out a bracket and put it on espn.com), and that he is our president is awesome.