Real Heroes Never Die

Real heroes live forever, at least in the mind and heart. The dictionary says a hero is a person who is an ideal or a model. I remember back to 1943 and the heroes of a six year old boy. No, they were not Ted Williams nor Stan Musial; they would come later. At that time Ted Williams was flying Marine fighter planes and as a six year old, I did not even know of him yet. My heroes could have been Bill Mauldin, the New Mexico cartoonist who created G.I. Joe and Sad Sack for the daily papers, or Ernie Pyle who lived in the trenches with the soldiers fighting in Germany, France, or the Philippines and giving us all the details of the battles. My heroes could have been Roy Smith, who could pitch a baseball faster than Nolan Ryan or Walter Johnson; or Grant Utt, who could hit the baseball farther than Babe Ruth. These people I have mentioned were all "ideals" or "models" of sorts, but they did not meet my immediate criteria, for they are all dead. And as I said at the beginning, real heroes live forever and never die.
So as a six year old, my heroes did not play on a baseball field in Boston, nor write war articles from the battlefields of France, and I did not even know Roy Smith and Grant Utt at that time. No, my heroes lived right across the street from my house and were both only six years older than I; but in the eyes of this six year old, they were both models and ideals. They provided inspiration, entertainment and fascination, and the thing that really made them heroes in the viewpoint of the six and seven year old boys in the neighborhood was the fact that they were kind enough to us little fellows to spend their time with us. How many twelve year olds today will do that??
Don Cox lived directly across from our house and Maurice Jones lived next door to him. I don' t know about the Jones boy, but Don Cox still lives, so along with the attributes mentioned above, he was my real hero.
Don and Maurice had set up the most wonderful "airplane" cockpit on the front porch of the Jones house and under the supervision of the two older boys, we little ones were allowed to "fly" the plane. They had taken a large cardboard box, cut it to the shape of an airplane instrument panel and using their compasses and protractors had drawn life-size, lifelike instrument gauges on the cardboard. Then chairs were placed appropriately so the pilot and co-pilot could fly the plane to far away destinations. They probably had more fun watching the excitement of the little kids than the fun they experienced in making the mock-up for themselves.
One evening little Jackie and Jim Foster and little Bobbie Hays and Nadine Foster and probably a few other town kids were playing in the vacant lot beside our house when Maurice Jones came running up and said we should come with him. He had something to show us. So we all dropped out bats and balls and started running after him as he headed for the old Episcopal church in the next block. As we approached, he began to look frightened, and asked us to follow him but to make no noise or something bad might happen. So, we quietly followed him as he drew near to the ground level windows that looked down into the darkened basement of the spooky old church. He carefully placed two or three of us at each of the windows and again cautioned us to be very quiet. But, then a frightening screaming, moaning sound came from the depths of the basement and an eerie flashing light revealed a sheet-covered apparition reaching out to children, beckoning them down into that dungeon. Maurice screamed, "Run" and run we did, all the way back to our homes, and I imagine Don Cox is still laughing from that dark, dank cellar.
One day I was privileged to be invited up to Don's room to see his collection. He had the most fascinating group of model airplanes, in various stages of construction, scattered around the room. Some of the finished models were suspended by string from the ceiling. World War II fighters and bombers, Japanese dive bombers and Messerschmidt fighters, all carrying on their aerial battles from the ceiling of Don's room. These were the old balsa wood models, covered with tissue paper and hand decorated. I was entralled, and immediately ran home and started begging my parents to buy me a model plane. When they did, probably only about 50 cents, I found that it was much easier for a twelve year old to build one of those models, than for a six year old. As I would glue one end of the tiny balsa sticks to the fuselage support, the other previously glued end would pop loose, and then the tissue paper would tear and so it went.. I never finished that plane, but I never told my hero.
Those two heroes could also do magical things in communication. I will never forget watching Maurice Jones standing on the "widow's walk" atop the Cox's house, dressed in his Scout uniform, and Don Cox standing on the roof of Grandma Cox's house way across town, also dressed in that elegant uniform. They could visualize each other over the tops of the trees and using their semaphore flags, they sent important messages over houses, probably to save the life of some damsel in distress. I became of Boy Scout years later because of the example set by those two heroes. Unfortunately, I found that being a Boy Scout was really not that exciting, but there were some good times.
So, I do not know the whereabouts of Maurice Jones, but Don Cox, my other hero, still lives in Cedar Vale and has evolved into a 265 pound gentleman who rides the streets of town on an electric scooter, and I am sure he is still bringing inspiration to all who know him now, just as he did sixty-four years ago. He will always be a hero ( as long as he lives).