Defining Heroism

Voices of Veterans: a special Veterans Day collection of tales of service

- Herman Kidder

The term “hero” has many different personal meanings. There are at least two meanings for me. First, it describes someone who voluntarily risks, or offers to risk, his/her personal welfare, reputation or wealth to help others in the everyday stress of life as well as in a time of special peril. Second, “hero” describes the voluntary sacrifice people give who do difficult or boring jobs and are little appreciated for their long-suffering efforts in the support of the needs of others. Mothers, fathers, teachers, doctors, nurses, etc. fit into this category.

In the early 1970s, I was enlisted in the U.S. Navy and was a Hospital Corpsman 2nd class at Naval Hospital San Diego, Calif. Specifically, I was an ENT (Ear, Nose and Throat) Technician in the Otolaryngology Department. That department was run by Captain Cantrell, who was a Navy captain as well as a medical doctor. He ran the department like a ship and demanded strict obedience to all the rules, his personal rules as well as the Navy’s more general rules. One of the first rules you learn in the Navy is, “Rank has its privilege.”

My job, on a particular day, was to assure that the patients coming into the clinic were seen in the correct order according to a strict set of procedural and protocol rules. One of the primary rules, as noted before, was that higher ranks were to be seen before lower ranks. Another rule was the Captain always, personally, saw any captain or higher ranking military patient and any politically connected civilian authorized to use the Navy Hospital medical services.