The stories of HeroicStories.
By Iris Little Bird
Arkansas, USA
When I arrived at Mom and Dad’s home seeds of rebellion had been planted in my young life. I had been mistreated and life was a hardship to me already. Teenage years had arrived with great turbulence. Mom and Dad had a home of love. I was shown through example that there is a way of love in life. Mom did not give birth to me — but she gave me much more.
Faith Senie
Bolton, MA
When I became a teenager, there was a rash of stories on the news about people being killed, hijacked, or molested by hitchhikers. Both my parents made it very clear to me that picking up hitchhikers was a Very Bad Idea.
By Anne Hill
Perth, Western Australia
Many years ago, I became ill at school. I suppose someone must have asked me if I was OK to get home by myself, and I must have said that I was. I wasn’t. My head ached fiercely, I wasn’t thinking very well, and I boarded the wrong bus. I still recall the feeling of panic that hit when I realized we were going the wrong way. I got out at the next stop and walked back to the street where my bus usually turned off, and set out walking.
by Laura Sosnowski
Illinois, USA
I was 19 in the mid 70’s, and worked in the Chicago loop, taking the train everyday from the suburbs to the historic underground Union Station. Like cattle we trudged past fast food restaurants, neon advertisements and shoe shine stands, among historic pillars towering toward decorated ceilings. As one, high powered professionals and millionaires, secretaries and mail clerks turned the corner toward the worn cement staircase that led us blinking into the outside light.
by Sylvia Nablo de Vasquez
San Ignacio, Belize
When my husband Yovanny was a child, his family was upper middle class Honduran, but when his father retired their standard of living was considerably reduced. So, in hopes of making a better living, in his late teens Yovanny left on a journey to live illegally in the U.S.A.
by Liz Brown Hanelt
California, USA
I live in California, and do a lot of driving on the San Francisco Bay Area freeways. Often I see different local police cars, or those of the California Highway Patrol (CHP) zooming past. Sometimes they’re parked by the side of the road where they may have pulled over a motorist; sometimes they’re assisting at an accident scene.
by Lori Coolahan
New Jersey, USA
My friend Nancy, a peppy single mother of three, took one of her girls to school one April day in 2005. Driving home on the main highway in Middletown, New Jersey, she saw a terrible accident: a car was smashed like a pancake under a flat bed truck!
by Lori Schwingshakl
Wisconsin, USA
In August 2001, I bid on and won an online auction for a back-to-school outfit for my 12-year-old niece. The clothes were a pair of like-new girls’ embroidered jeans and a matching top. Due to hard times in her family, my niece didn’t have a lot of nice things. Also, she wore a hard-to-find size, so well-fitting clothes were usually beyond what her parents could afford.
by Eric
Michigan, USA
Some years ago my fastest route across Florida to get to my parents’ home was on Interstate 4 through Orlando, which had heavy and dangerous traffic. Often I saw or heard accidents, and my parents worried about me driving through that area. But I knew the roads, the cheapest place for gas, and exactly where all the rest areas were, so I wasn’t all that worried.
By Paul Fessenden
Florida, USA
The Vietnam War was raging, and President Nixon had announced that Cambodia had been bombed by America. I was a high school junior. The local college was on strike to protest what they perceived as “crimes against humanity” by their government. It was beautiful Spring day in May of 1970. The college campus, a quarter mile from my school, teemed with striking students, sitting around singing folk songs, catching some sun, and throwing Frisbees… all much more appealing than my high school classes.