Americans:Founders, Heroes & Badasses

Today is a day to celebrate America, and the trueness of its spirit. In that vein here's an interesting article about George Washington that shows him as a hero and a badass, but also a "regular" man. There was a great documentary on the History Channel, maybe last year, about this as well with such info like one of the reasons he agreed to fight was because he was getting cheated in his import/export business by his British partner.
This is a basically informative video about the signers of the Declaration, and the sacrifices they endured which reiterates to me Ben Franklins' warning "We must hang together, gentlemen...else, we shall most assuredly hang separately.". I would mute the volume on the video, if I were you; cheesy 80's music sort of ruins the mood



And finally, this man holds a pretty special place in my heart. His name is Jacklyn Lucas, and he may be one of the most badass men ever. He enlisted to fight in WWII when he was 14, claiming that he was 17. He got into a lot of disciplinary problems because he really wanted to fight in the war. When he got to Iwo Jima he and some other soldiers came under gun and grenade attack. Jack Lucas (bad ass name as well) dove on one grenade and reached out and pulled the other underneath him as well. And he survived! He justifiably won the Medal of Honor, the youngest winner since the Civil War. And he's a Dukie! Probably the best of us all. He was introduced at halftime of one of our football games last year and as his story was told to us, we were all shocked we had never heard about him and he got like a 5 minute standing ovation (and I really hope we build him a statute at Duke; if any one deserves one, and stands for all that Duke should represent, and all Dukies should aspire, to be it is him) [You can bug Larry Moneta, our VP, about it at larry.moneta@duke.edu. He always loves mail.]

Here is a list of all Medal of Honor winners. And to them, all I can humbly say is Thank you.

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