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Sent to me by a friend for posting.

By Mike Barnicle;

        This is how it works now in America:
        You get a big, famous millionaire athlete who apparently is so
stupid, selfish or both that he cannot control his sexual appetite and when
be becomes HIV-positive, practically the whole country collapse in tears,
puts him on a pedestal and turns him into an idol.
        Wednesday, there were long stories about Magic Johnson, who decided
to come out of retirement in order to play basketball again with the Los
Angeles Lakers, Good for him and good luck too because this is who he is:
tremendous ballplayer.
        It's the other aspect of the tale that is tragic. Johnson is a
college graduate with great physical and financial resources who must have
been the only man alive unaware of the fact that you might get AIDS if you
go around having sex with a couple hundred different people in various
cities.
        Here we have a guy who put his wife at risk of infection as well as
his baby. Yet instead of being labeled a moron, he is called a hero.
                                   * * *
        The very word, hero has been so cheapened and demeaned over the
past few years that I guess we should not be surprised. Still, it is kind
of incredible that anyone in their right mind would place such a label on
someone of proven bizarre conduct.
        Part of the reason could be that we are told over and over lately
that we must not be judgmental. In other words, there is no such thing as
right and wrong, moral or immoral, crazy or sane. To make any judgment
about someone or something is to risk being slapped with one or another
of the politically correct code words employed to further neuter our
society.
        This week, I sat on the porch of a house on Quincy Street in
Roxbury, Mass., talking to an old friend of mine who is dying of cancer.
She is 42 years old.
        Four years ago, the killer took a breast. Twenty-two months later,
doctors informed her the illness had spread to her lung.
        She has three children. The oldest, a girl, is 16 years old. The
two others, boys, are 12 and 8.
        For a couple weeks this summer, the woman underwent chemotherapy
on nearly a daily basis. In order to get back and forth to the hospital,
she took a bus.
        Each day that she went for treatment, no matter how sick she felt,
she'd stop at Holy Cross Cathedral to pray. Kneeling at the altar, she
tried again and again to cut a deal with God: Just give her enough time to
get her daughter out of high school and into college and she'd be happy.
        Now, with the first chill of fall coming down the avenue, she was
watching these four young guys, maybe 15, 16 years old, moving along the
sidewalk. She knew all of them to be more dangerous than electricity.
        Two of the kids wore black leather 8-Ball jackets that people
literally kill for. The other two simply wore smirks.
        "It's so sad," my friend was saying. "loo at them. There's nothing
 in their eyes. They have these dead eyes.
        "They hang around trying to sell enough red-tops to get money to
buy some for themselves. That's what they think life is, selling crack."
                                   * * *
        One of the kids nodded to us as the group passed and the woman
said hello. The four of them crossed the street and headed to the
playground at the corner of Blue Hill Avenue.
        "He's not 15," she was saying. "He's only 12 years old. He looks
older than he is and you would too if you were him.
        "I knew his mother. She was a junkie. She took that boy to day
care when he was about 3 months old and she never came back. Left him
there. I think she died in jail."
        "Me, I'm lucky. I know I'm going to die, probably fairly
soon. But I've had time to pray and talk to my children about death and
about life too. About how wonderful life can be if you don't give up, if
you can get yourself an education and if you have people around who love
you."
        "My children go to school every day. They work hard and they love
one another and they respect their mother. That's a lot. That's something
God gave me."
        In the paper  the other morning, there was an obituary for a
young man named Kevin O'Neil who was claimed by cancer at  age 20. He was
from Hingham, Mass., went to BC High and on to Harvard where he studied
while struggling with his illness. When he was dying in the hospital,
O'Neil tutored other children on the ward. Give back instead of giving up.
        All around us, there are these amazing people who live and raise
families under the weight of tremendous odds. Each day, they inspire with
their selfless gifts.
        These are the heroes, who ought to be held up as role models to so
many of the young who are never taught that there is a right and a wrong.
Why would we ever waste our time on a sad, selfish athlete when there are
such champions right in front of us?
				
					Mike Barnicle is an associate
					editor of the Boston Globe.
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