Extra Ordinary Heroes

Real heroes are men who fall and fail and are flawed,

but win out in the end because they've stayed true

to their ideals and beliefs and commitments.

- Kevin Costner

I have spent the past two weeks focusing most of my waking hours helping to get ready for and execute our church's Vacation Bible School (VBS) Program. The first of the past two weeks was spent in final preparations and finishing all of the decorations and backdrops, the later was the actual week of VBS with over sixty children participating. I was one of two women in charge of the crafts station. I love VBS! I always look forward to it as one of my favorite weeks of the year. Perhaps that is because I cannot have any children of my own and relish any opportunity I can to share in the lives of other people's children. To be able to see the world through the eyes of a child is an amazing gift. Anyway, this year's theme was sports - "Game Day Central: Where Heroes Are Made!" According to our VBS lesson plans "True Heroes":

1. Obey God even when it's not easy.
2. Do their best in everything.
3. Believe in Jesus and follow God's plan.
4. Put others first.
5. Tell others about Jesus.

Last year was my first year helping out with VBS at my current church after a several year personal VBS hiatus. In my thank you gift from the director (a small book) she wrote, "You are one of the most amazing people I know! Your gifts and abilities are evident in so many areas and I thank you so much for your extraordinary help and support and leadership." My inital reaction to this was, "If I am one of the most amazing people she knows, it's definitely way past time for her to go out and meet more people!" I am just a person who says they don't like pie when there isn't enough to go around.

We relish news of our heroes, forgetting that we are extraordinary to somebody too. - Helen Hayes

A boy doesn’t have to go to war to be a hero; he can say he doesn’t like pie when there isn’t enough to go around. – Edgar Watson Howe, American Journalist and Author

Needless to say, all of this has gotten me to think about the "Heroes" in my own life...who they are, what defines them as people, why I admire them so much and how the examples of their lives sustain me in my own and have shaped me as a person. Amidst all of my current life changes, part of defining my heroes, I think, is to re-establish those roots which will give me the necessary continuity to support this new growth.

Here are my thoughts on "Amazing People" - Amazing people are not flawless, all of humanity has faults and short-comings - just different ones. Depending on our perspective we see the rest of the world as having either many more or much fewer problems that our own, but I believe that God is the original designer of the "No Child Left Behind" concept (Unlike the system created by our current U.S. public education bureaucracies though, His plan is flawless). He has created a unique set of challenges for each us, our own personalized "life curriculum" so to speak. Amazing people earn that title (in my book) not by being flawless but by how they respond to the work of God in their lives, how they view and respond to the world around them, and how they view and respond to the unique sets of challenges that God gives to each of us as exercises in becoming the people he created us to be.

I decided to dedicate some time to reflecting on the Extra Ordinary People in my life that I call "Heroes." Today's hero is Karl Bader. In the picture below we are dancing at the wedding reception of a mutual friend - Karl is, of course, the fifty-something man and I am the little girl of seven or eight.

I will highlight my heroes in no particular order, but as one of the changes that I am staring in the face is the prospect of selling our modest, cookie-cutter suburban house that my husband and I had built four years ago and returning to apartment living (which we haven't done since we moved to our first rented house in July of 1993), I think of Karl and find comfort in knowing that the "American Dream" doesn't have to be about owning property and a house.

Karl E. Bader was an extraordinary man. He was born August 08, 1926 in Stuttgart, Germany and as a teenager was required to serve in Hitler's Nazi army during World War II. After the war, the conditions in Germany were so terrible that he decided to immigrate to the United States, by way of Canada. At the age of twenty-five in 1952, he immigrated to Niagara Falls, Ontario, Canada where he rented a single room in a boarding house and worked as a brick layer although by profession he was an architect. It was a very difficult time to be a German immigrant in the post-World War II era. He later sent for his wife to join him and they had their first son while still living in the rented room of the boarding house. Eventually they had a second son and moved to a small apartment. In 1959, they completed their migration to America and came to make their permanent home in the Greater Buffalo Area in New York State where he began working as an architect and a few months later joined a well-respected architectual firm in Williamsville, NY and made a 31-year career there and they became United States citizens.

Although I thought the biographical details were somewhat of a pre-requisite, they do little to tell the story of what earns Karl the title of "Hero," that comes from the quiet way in which he lived his life. Although a successful architect who could have easily made home ownership a reality for his family, he made a conscious, deliberate choice to live out the majority of their days in a rented apartment. He did not want to be consumed with property ownership and all that that entails. On days that weather permitted, he chose to commute by bicycle as opposed to car. Karl started every day by going to his church to pray before going to work or anything else.

Karl was a man who had the ability to see and foresee needs in the lives of others and in the community around him and then quietly went about helping to meet those needs. He touched and changed lives every day without any fanfare or recognition. He truly was Christ-like in his caring for others. He was filled with an inner joy that only comes from knowing our Lord on a personal level. During his career the main thrust of his work was on the design of rehabilitation projects and additions for many local school districts as well as some fire halls and branch banks. He was also instrumental in the design and overseeing of a major wing added to the Niagara Luthern Home and Rehabilitation Center in Buffalo and served for many years on their Board of Directors, being elected it's president in 1991.

In my own life, my father died less than two months after my sixth birthday. Karl was one of the many men in my wider circle of extended family and family friends who served as a strong male role model during my formative years. Karl and his family attended the same church as my own family and along with six other families - the Lawlers, the Hoffs, the Barenthalers, the Simmonses, (and later after the Simmonses moved away) the Belzes and the Dryers, we composed "The Family Life Committee" that was in charge of not only the weekly coffee hour, but planning and executing all of the parish dinners and fellowship events throughout the year. For all of the 1970's and most of the 1980's this group of people was more than a "committee" - they laughed together, played together, cried together and prayed together both inside and outside of the church. They shared each others' joys and burdens. These were the type of friends who really could call upon one another at 2:30 in the morning, if a need arose. If they were analyzed by modern-day, formalized church growth strategists, they would have probably been labeled a "small group." All of my adult life I have been longing to find that kind of relationship and friendship that was shared by those adults in that time. Oh, how I envy what they had! However, I am not so sure such friendships are an achieveable goal in today's contemporary society and culture.

"Baaarrrrb," I can still hear him say in his thick, gutteral German accent, accompanied by a big, bear hug. I cannot reproduce it, but I can hear it in my head. He always made it a point to spend some time in conversation with me each week after the worship service and even as a child he would ask me intelligent questions and really listen to my answers. He made me feel important. One of my fondest childhood memories is going to the Bader's home (yes, it was a small apartment, but it was still very much a "home" in every sense of the word) on Christmas Eve between the worship services and it was filled with good scents, sounds and visions. His wife, Isolde, would make every kind of German Christmas cookie imaginable as well as some German soft-pretzels and they would have a fresh, live Christmas tree lit with small, real burning candles placed in special holders on the boughs (Karl loved to amaze his friends by placing one of the boughs in the flame to prove that a fresh, well-watered tree would not burn). All of their closest friends and those who had no other other place to share in the joy of the holiday season would gather in their small living/dining room just about elbow to elbow and share in fellowship and sing Christmas Carols from booklets that Karl had put together - typed up the words and photocopied (although I guess it was mimeographed in those days, remember the "pretty" mimeograph blue?) and stapled together and we would all sing out in hearty, harmonized, a cappella voices.

When I think of adjectives to decribe Karl Bader, some that come to mind are intelligent, humble, compassionate, prayerful, generous, righteous, understanding, empathetic, genuine . . . In the words of my sister, Patti, "a true reflection of God." I don't know - to attempt to describe in words would be in some way boxing and labeling and I believe one just cannot do that with people. It is so limiting. Although I strongly believe in the power of words and this blog is somewhat dedicated to that power of words, there are still some places that even words cannot go, some things that remain unexpressable. So, I will leave you with this quote I found:

People ask me to describe a hero, I often fail at it. You see words are hollow things, they carry small meaning. Words lack the substance to do a real hero full justice. Real heros must be watched and seen to be understood. We see and hear about all of the people portrayed as heros - sports heros, entertainment heros, media heros, and so on, people whose charmed arrogance is just under the shine. Words and adjectives can describe these people with ease. They are not true heros and never could be, they are void . . . - Keith Howerton (Jacob's Dad)

Karl died in May of 1996 at the age of 69 of ALS - Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (more commonly known as "Lou Gherig's Disease") -- his funeral was standing room only. I have been to a lot of funerals in my thirty-five years, but only two others were standing room only. To live one's life in such a way that your funeral is "standing room only" - that's what it's all about!