Ever wonder how some people come to deserve the title “hero” attached to their names? An obituary you may have missed helps provide a partial answer.

    Elizabeth Huckaby died on March 18, 1999, in Little Rock, Arkansas, at the age of 93. She was a vice principal at Central High School in Little Rock when that school was integrated under federal court order in 1957.

    Mrs. Huckaby was entering her twenty-eighth year at Central High and was not a civil rights activist. As she later admitted, “I had never known any black well, except those in household employ.” She was a child of her time and place. As fate would have it, however, she was summoned to act on her convictions.

    White students at the Arkansas high school tried to intimidate the nine black students who had broken its racial barrier. One ominous day, about fifty boys gathered at the top of the stairs into the school. No troops or federal marshals were in sight. They shouted racial epithets and threatened the black students who were approaching.

“She had a heck of a lot of guts.”

    One of the African-American girls in the group later recounted what took place as she and the others with her prepared to back away: “Vice Principal Huckaby made her presence known at the bottom of the stairs. Tiny, erect, and determined, she stood there all alone between us and our attackers, demanding they leave us alone. One by one she challenged the leaders, calling them by name, telling them to get to class or there would be hell to pay. Whether or not she favored integration, she had a heck of a lot of guts.”

    I’d say Elizabeth Huckaby was truly heroic that day. Yet she did not count herself a social crusader. She was simply a teacher. As she later explained it, her actions during the integration of Central High School grew out of her conviction that it was morally wrong to segregate a public school system based on race.

    “Hero” is not a job to apply for at anyone’s employment agency. It is a role people fill when they act courageously to do what they know to be right.

    Children who do their own homework, husbands and wives who remain faithful to each other, drivers who ding fenders in the parking lot and leave a note with their names and addresses, employees who come early and stay late to get tasks done on time — they are heroes. They are doing right and expecting no applause. They are living the habits of character in life’s mundane moments.

    Be alert. Your next chance at heroism is likely just around the corner.