Is Terry Fox a True Hero?

  At the age of  eighteen, he was diagnosed with osteogenic sarcoma and  for those of you who aren’t doctors, this means bone cancer. As a result his right leg had to be amputated  to 15 inches above the knee in 1977.  When he was in the hospital he saw cancer patients,  many of  them  children  and  decided to run across Canada to raise $1 million  for cancer research.

   The idea  for the Marathon of Hope came from Terry Fox alone. He trained secretly  by  running about  four thousand kilometers.  When  he  determined he was ready he announced that he would run across the country.  He hadn’t even  told  his  family.  His  original  goal  was  to  raise  a  dollar  from  every Canadian.

   I have only  ever seen  the CBC version  and it showed the human side of Terry  including  him being angry over a  few different things.  Things that I would also have been quite angry over, like being accused of not running all the way across Quebec. The man did something that was bigger than life, he deserves to be seen in the same way .

     If  I recall – He had one companion who drove an old beat up van – they would stop in some small town and no one knew about him – that was at the beginning.  And the story grew – Just try an imagine the personal drive and commitment he had inside of  him.  The pain he endured, he had to have had more personal drive & commitment in one day of running than many people will have in a lifetime.

    I think Terry Fox was about as good a human as it is “humanly” possible to be.  There are two ways to view someone as a hero.  One is the individual view of  a hero,  and the second  is the societies vision of  what  constitutes a hero, and by individual merritt, both are correct in my view. As individuals, one might regard someone a bonafide hero if he saved your life, or someone in your family.

   There are also people like Terry Fox, who created something bigger than himself,  while  not  trying  to  create an annual event,  all he was doing was drawing attention to a problem. Terry Fox also displayed the attributes of a genuine person. As Terry Fox created the Marathon of hope and he ran until his cancer came back and drove him out of  that event and killed him.

    Thereafter,  Steve Fonyo is viewed as someone who took up Foxes’ run,     but perception views him  as an opportunist who’s actions did not display those of a role model. Steve Fonyo didn’t have the strong mental approach  to life that Terry Fox had,  he  also  tried to mimic what Terry Fox did,  but unfortunately his poor character got in the way, he was not the  first, and didn’t match up to the ‘first’.

    Being  the  fact  Steve Fonyo is a  fellow Hungarian  has  nothing  to  do  with the reasoning.  Steve Fonyo  on  the other hand  was both stupid  and irresponsible. True he ran across the country, and he was given numerous chances  to  get around his drinking  and his drug problems. He  was  even awarded the Order of Canada,  but  he  persisted  in  drinking  and  driving and he ended up in jail. 

  Although,  Steve Fonyo did  finish the cross country run, he never caught the imagination of  the people like Terry Fox. I really don’t think Terry Fox intended to be a hero. Thereby, heroism is coined in the reflection of events and also nominees usually get that title when their actions weren’t for self gratification.  Steve Fonyo  looked  very much like someone in need of self gratification and promotion.

    I can admire the  ‘image’  that  many  sports  and  celebrity heroes put forward, however, as we have now realized in the Tiger Wood’s situation, the image is only an image, and sometimes the real person is someone else and  when they  fall,  they  fall  hard.  Terry Fox  whom  was  a regular guy, not a celebrity,  he is/was a ‘real’ hero and the kind we will never  forget.  

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