Costco Connection - June 2010

Brad Meltzer wants to show the greatness in everyone

We can be

heroes

CORI MELTZER

By David W. Fuller

HERE’S THE DEAL about Brad Meltzer: He saved the house where Superman was created.

But there’s more: • He married his high school sweetheart.

• He co-wrote the pledge for AmeriCorps participants.

• His passion seems to be passion.

• He may be Clark Kent, reincarnated.

If you would like to know more about this author of seven bestsellers, I recommend you take a look at his first nonfiction book, Heroes for My Son, out this month. Just as you can tell a lot about people based on the friends they keep, you can learn plenty based on the heroes they revere. Heroes is a straightforward series of brief profiles of the heroes Meltzer has collected on his 40-year journey as husband, father, novelist, comic-book writer and all-around good guy.

As the title suggests, Meltzer conceived
the book as a way of conveying to his new-
born son stories about the importance of
humility, sacrifice, perseverance, passion and
integrity. Now the father of three, Meltzer
says, “These are the stories I want my kids to
grow up with.”
Here are a few of the heroes in the book:
Norman Borlaug, the scientist who devel-
oped high-yielding, disease-resistant grains
and saw that they were deployed to save mil-
lions of lives in China, India, Mexico and else-
where.

Frank Shankwitz, co-founder of the Make-A-Wish Foundation.

Clara Hale, who, over the course of more than 20 years, helped raise nearly 1,000 abandoned children, many of whom came to her as infants born with HIV/AIDS or suffering drug withdrawal.

You were expecting Martin Luther King
Jr., George Washington and Lou Gehrig?
They’re in the book too. It’s just that, to
Meltzer, heroes don’t have to be famous, and
they don’t have to be especially brave. They
simply are ordinary people who have tapped
into the extraordinary possibilities and
strengths we all have.

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS

Top: Meltzer plays with his youngest heroes (l to r), daughter Lila and sons Jonas and Theo. Above: Soccer great Pele’s influence was such that in 1967 the Nigerian war was halted for 48 hours so that the two sides could watch him play.

JUNE 2010 ;e Costco Connection 41
of rehashing the Wright brothers’ great
moment of flight at Kitty Hawk, Meltzer
writes of how every day they would bring to
the field all of the materials needed to rebuild
their craft “because they knew their fledgling
design would crash.”
“Crash and rebuild. Crash and rebuild.
But never ever, ever give up,” he writes.