AUGUST 28 "DO YOU HAVE A HERO?"

  There's one World War II veteran whose story is the focus of Mel Gibson’s movie, "Hacksaw Ridge."

     The story is a true story of the life of Desmond Doss, a soldier who didn't believe in using guns. He was a Christian conscientious objector and ended up saving 75 of his fellow soldiers. He was awarded the Medal of Honor. Desmond Doss Jr. said for years that producers tried to turn his father's story into a film, but it never worked out until director Mel Gibson came along. "I’m glad Mel did it. He did a spectacular job. I don't think anyone other than Mel could've done it," Doss Jr. said. "I feel very gratified that Desmond Jr. liked the film so much and that he loved Andrew Garfield, who plays doss. He told me that Andrew nailed his dad," Gibson said. a war medic, Doss ended up saving over 75 fellow soldiers in Okinawa, Japan during world war ii. "What he did in his life was so amazing and an inspiration," Gibson said. "From the time I was a little kid, people always asked me if I wanted to be my daddy. The short answer is yes," Doss Jr. said. Doss passed away in 2006, before the movie was made. Doss Jr. said he knows his father would be pleased. "The movie depicts him in an accurate way. I’m a changed man, seeing what my father did and having it depicted it in such a visual way," he said. The world will now see how Desmond doss was a hero, something his son always knew. "He was my hero, he was my dad, you love your dad," he said.

     In the past maybe a hero was a father, today, many fathers are incarcerated or they are not directly involved in their children’s lives, they’ve divorced and moved on or remarried or just disappear. Perhaps it was a sports athlete. Today, sports athletes will say, “don’t look to me as your hero, I’m just a football player, I’m not an example or hero to nobody.”
     And so we have become so desperate that we have turned to actors and reality TV. Stars; to be our hero’s. People we know nothing about, other than they roles they play, which often are far removed from who they really are.
     Hero’s are quickly fading away in our generation, it’s becoming a far gone ideal; where are our hero’s going? Bill Cosby was a TV. celebrity that many made their hero, as the grasped for a hero. Sitting in our living rooms though out the 80’s, many elected him as their hero. We looked up to him and held up as a paragon of virtue. Indeed, his image had been so exemplary that the title “America’s Dad” had been bestowed upon him by millions; only to find out, in a court deposition given by Bill Cosby, that he had made a mea-culpa revealing that he had admitted to securing drugs with the ultimate goal of having sex with woman. As we live in a world where people are becoming more absorbed with themselves, it leaves little room for any hero’s to rise up. Desmond Doss Jr., has no idea (or maybe he does) how fortunate, blessed, he is, to have had a “hero” growing up, not a hero with a cape on a movie screen, but a real hero, his dad.