3 Heroes That Changed The World
When you want to know more about yourself, pay attention to the things that move you, that make you cry. Those are the things that symbolize your values and bring deep resonance within. They tell you alot about who you are.
Over 30 years ago, I was lucky enough to discover CBS Sunday Morning and I’ve been watching the show ever since. At the time, the awesome American journalist Charles Kuralt was the host. Over the years the show has introduced me to a few of my most inspirational heroes. People whose lives are an inspiration and blessing to us all.
Most everybody has heard of Bill Gates and of course Steve Job’s. They’re household names, and rightfully so. These three heroes in this article are far from household names, in fact, few people have heard of them. None of these people were searching for fame or attention, it came sometimes reluctantly or as a by product of the value they created in the world.
The first hero is Charles Francis Feeney
From humble beginnings to one of the founding partner of the duty free shops. Feeney became enormously wealthy, perhaps as rich as Bill Gates. Like Gates, he had tremendous impact on society.
Despite his wealth, Feeney consciously chose to live a humble and frugal lifestyle. He was inspired by Andrew Carnegie’s essay The Gospel of Wealth, with its declaration that “the millionaire will be but a trustee for the poor”. “I have always empathised with people who have it tough in life,” Feeney said in a rare interview with Ireland’s RTE in 2010. “And the world is full of people who don’t get enough to eat.”
Feeney wanted to make a difference with his wealth, secretly building his foundation Atlantic Philanthropies.org as a vehicle through which he could anonymously donate more than $3.7bn to higher education institutions, including almost $1bn to Cornell University, where he studied hotel administration for free under the GI bill after service as a US air force radio operator during the Korean war.
Feeney also donated $870m to human rights groups (including $62m in grants to groups campaigning to end the death penalty in the US, and $76m to grassroots campaigns supporting the passage of Obamacare.) It wasn’t his values to see the wing of a hospital with his name on it. In fact, many people have no idea that it was Feeney’s generosity that spurred Bill Gates and Warren Buffett to establish the Giving Pledge, under which the world’s richest people commit to giving away at least half their wealth to charity.
Most of the world still wouldn’t know his name if it weren’t for the author and Irish journalist Colon O’Clery and his book, “The Billionaire Who Wasn’t”. The book described how Feeney, a poor kid from Elizabeth, made billions by starting the Duty Free Shops and gave most of it away anonymously.
Read more and the full story about Feeney below:
The second of my heroes is the inventor Forrest Bird.
I’m quite sure not to many people know this, but he’s the man that in the 1950’s and ‘60’s:
Pioneered some of the first portable and reliable mechanical ventilators for people with acute and chronic heart and lung afflictions. These relatively small devices, used in all but the worst cases, made primitive and expensive mechanisms like the iron lung virtually obsolete only a decade after hospital wards had been lined with them at the height of paralytic polio epidemics. He eventually developed four generations of cardiopulmonary devices that came to be widely used in homes and hospitals.
Forrest wasn’t a scientist, but an aviator like his dad. While flying his plane he had an epiphany making the association of how the way the air flowed through the wings could be associated to the way the air moved through the lungs, creating a prototype breathing device.
It goes to show how curiousity, a willingness to tinker and solve problems, can absolutely impact the world. Years later, all the preemie babies, which include my son, can be thankful for the incubator that made his life possible today.
Last, but certainly not least, the third hero is Zita Cobb
Zita Cobb wa the first Canadian female social entrepreneur inducted into the Canadian Business Hall of Fame. She grew up in a small fishing village in New Foundland,where she developed a deep respect for nature, culture and community.
After a successful career in the high-tech industry, Zita returned to Fogo Island in the early 00’s to help grow another leg on the Island’s struggling economy to complement its ever-important fishery. To support the island’s delicate fishing ecosystem and local economy, Zita founded Shorefast alongside her two brothers in 2004. Learn the full story of Zita in the amazing article below:
At a time when it’s easy to see how messed up things are around the world. When it’s a daily occurrence to see so many disheartening situations, we must also remind ourselves and take note that the world is full of the most awesome and incredible people that devote and have devoted their entire lives to making life, their communities, and the world at large, a better place for all of us!
