Who are your heroes/mentors/role models

[Phoenix87x]

Alive or dead, who have you looked to as a hero, mentor or role model? It can be anyone at all.

for me:

1. Terence McKenna- his guidance and teachings helped me get my life back and be the person I want to be

2. Mark Twain - Dude was wildly sharp and his quotes and teaches help me navigate the muck of life easier

3. Thomas Jefferson- He has been described as a polymath (lover of knowledge and learning) and I can really relate. I love to learn as well and
                                         looking at his example, I feel like I don't have to limit myself to just one subject

4. Carl Sagen- Lover of knowledge, and life. I learned so much about our universe and our place in it from him.

5. Melissa - A close friend of mine that I work with. She has always mentored me from day one. She is the smartest person I have ever met and I
                                         appreciate that I can always go to her for guidance.

There's probably more, but that's all I can think of off the top of my head.

how about you guys? 

[frogprog]

1. My Dad.
Although my parents were pretty strict growing up, and I was one of 5, Pop always came through for me when I really needed it. He has imparted tons of wise advice to me throughout my life. He is a honest, God fearing family man that worked extremely hard to make sure his family and others were taken care of. He also always had a great sense if humor. (still does!)
2/3. My two older brothers
We used to fight like cats and dogs but as men I have the utmost respect for who they are.
4. Neil K.
A youth pastor that helped guide me in my adolescent years. He was a great guy and was a great role model for us. We always had a great time and he taught us all some really important life lessons through the way he lead his life.
5. Roger B.
He was an even tempered boss that took me and my co-workers (all young idiots mire interested in partying than showing up for work) under his wing. He taught me the technical craftsmanship of being a master carpenter but also he also showed me how to be a respected man in our chosen profession. Any time I ever brought up his name, be it to other contractors or suppliers, people always said what a great guy he was. I have patterned my work ethic after the way my Dad and Roger operated.

[Cool Chris]

I love my dad. He is a good guy and devoted himself to giving myself and my sister the best lives he could. Aside from most of my 20s where I was struggling and we didn't connect at all, we have been close my whole life. But I'd never consider him a mentor or hero. He has just always been my dad.

I've never had someone in my life I'd consider a hero/mentor/role model. I don't know if that's circumstance, or my obstinacy. Either way, I certainly could have used someone in that role when my life took a nosedive at adulthood.

[Stadler]

My mom and dad.

Some of you know the story... they met at a bowling alley (they had the same last name BEFORE they were married); they were bowling and the guy says "Stadler (not our real name), Lane 2" and they both showed up, met, married like a year later and were together for 58 married years, spending 24 hours a day, every day, with each other until my dad died in June.  I had to tell my mom and she just looked at me and said "I lost my buddy."   He got severe rheumatoid arthritis at a young age, about 35, and was for all intents and purposes, physically handicapped the rest of his life.  Two artificial hips, four artificial knees and set of new knuckles on one hand later, he managed to make it to 83.  The list of other things he battled - he beat non-Hodgkins lymphoma twice, had a partial bowel resection, had Joe Montana spinal fusion, numerous small bouts of skin cancer, and heart disease - is something, but the lesson is... 

They never quit.  I never once heard him say "why me?".  He always counted his blessings, not his curses: a brain that worked (he's the smartest guy I know; he made me feel dumb, and I'm in MENSA), a loving, beautiful wife, two decent kids, an extended family that loved each other, even if that love was sometimes flawed.  He taught me you play the cards you're dealt, don't waste time wishing for cards you don't have.  He taught me you keep plugging every day.  EVERY DAY. I used to have to put his socks and shoes on for him because he couldn't bend (and even if he could, his fingers weren't dexterous enough to tie the laces).  Mom taught me that we're greater than the sum of our parts.  She taught me that you make a commitment, you keep it.  That THIS is your life; not the life of others you see on TV or Instachat, but this one.  Mom's now fading at 85, and in memory care, but both of them lived with no regrets and with pride for what they accomplished. Not a moment wasted on worrying about what they didn't.

They weren't perfect, far from it, but I got all the life lessons I ever needed from them, and I'm grateful every day for that.

[pg1067]

FWIW, I consider heroes, mentors and role models to be very different things.

I'm not sure I truly have any heroes (perhaps in the sports context, but that's not anything important).

Role models:  My mother was, for me, the ultimate role model AS A PARENT.  My parents were born in 1921 and 1923.  Unlike Stads, I don't know anything about how they met, but I know that they were married during WWII, in which my father served in the Navy.  He was on a ship that was attacked by a kamikaze plane in May 1945 (which resulted in my father not being in the neighborhood when the atomic bombs were dropped on Japan).  At the time, my mother was pregnant with my brother (my oldest sibling).  Following the kamikaze attack, the ship and my father went to San Francisco (via Pearl Harbor) for repairs, and my mother took a cross-country train ride (while about 6 months pregnant) to meet him there.  My siblings were all born between 1945-1956, and then I came along 11 years later in 1967.  When I was 7, my father died of a heart attack, and the next dozen years of my mother's life were essentially devoted to raising me on her own.  She then had to endure the deaths of two of her children before she had an accident and died at the age of 84 in 2007.  She was a low-key badass who, in her mid-60s helped me carry my bass amp cabinets in and out of our house so I could go to band practice (among many other things).  I can't say I have/had any real role models in other (non-sports) contexts (other than the mentors listed below).

Mentors:  My first couple jobs were in fast food.  Meanwhile, my oldest sister had earned her law degree and was practicing with a firm.  In 1988, she left the firm and went in-house with one of the firm's clients, and she got me a job as a file clerk.  While doing that job, I would read the papers that I was filing and acquaint myself with the firm's files and ask tons of questions of the lawyer.  This led to me being made a paralegal, and I worked at that firm until the end of my second year of law school.  I worked at a different firm in an unrelated field for the first dozen years out of law school, but the job I have now, I landed because of that connection.  Those folks taught me how to write and understand legal reasoning (skills which were refined primarily as a result of working with a lawyer at my prior firm) those folks are the closest to mentors I can think of.

[El Barto]

1. I didn't really have a real life role model. I did however pick up traits from people unintentionally. My old man was probably the opposite of a role model, yet I take after him a great deal nowadays, albeit I like to think the better qualities (and he'd agree). Similarly, I took some characteristics from my grandmother, despite growing up thinking she was the last person I'd want to emulate. Between the two of them I somehow turned out to be a highly pragmatic bleeding heart; go figure.

2. Hunter Thompson (naturally) and Gregory Peck, for starkly different reasons. These are the two people I've always considered heroes, and people that I try to be more like, despite knowing I'll never be close to either. Interestingly, I read an article on Cracked recently that suggested, as a means of bettering your perspective on the world, to picture your greatest hero in life passed out in a drunken stupor on his front lawn with no pants on at 6 in the morning; neighbors gawking and whatnot. In once case it provides a nice sense of humility (Mr. Peck admittedly had is flaws), and in the other case it just makes me think "FUCK YEAH!" 

[Stadler]

1. I didn't really have a real life role model. I did however pick up traits from people unintentionally. My old man was probably the opposite of a role model, yet I take after him a great deal nowadays, albeit I like to think the better qualities (and he'd agree). Similarly, I took some characteristics from my grandmother, despite growing up thinking she was the last person I'd want to emulate. Between the two of them I somehow turned out to be a highly pragmatic bleeding heart; go figure.

2. Hunter Thompson (naturally) and Gregory Peck, for starkly different reasons. These are the two people I've always considered heroes, and people that I try to be more like, despite knowing I'll never be close to either. Interestingly, I read an article on Cracked recently that suggested, as a means of bettering your perspective on the world, to picture your greatest hero in life passed out in a drunken stupor on his front lawn with no pants on at 6 in the morning; neighbors gawking and whatnot. In once case it provides a nice sense of humility (Mr. Peck admittedly had is flaws), and in the other case it just makes me think "FUCK YEAH!" 

I imagine HST had, in fact, passed out in a drunken stupor in his - or someone else's - front lawn with no pants on at some point in his life.