Who were your heroes?

John Wayne in The Sands of Iwo Jima, Back to Bataan, and Flying Tigers.
Gary Cooper in High Noon.
Roy Rogers or Gene Autry in about a million different westerns??

Nope.  None of these.

I mean real-life personal heroes.  The mere mortal adults who had a profound impact on your life when you were coming of age.

Not your parents. That’s too easy.
I’m talking about teachers, neighbors, family friends, service professionals.  People who gave a damn and made a difference in your life when it mattered.

One of mine? An unusual choice. I can’t even remember her name. But I’ll never forget what she did for me.

She was the school nurse at P.S. 32, my elementary school in Flushing, New York.
Yes, our schools were numbered. “All hail to thee, dear 32” were the opening words of our school song.
Gets ya, doesn’t it? Poetic stuff (if it were P.S. 33, that is).

Anyway, one day in 8th grade, just before I was set to move on to Bayside High, the nurse called me into her office. Of course, I complied.  It was a different world in 1953

Now, a little context on what I looked like.
I had a very large overbite (AKA Buck Teeth).
That was also one of the kinder nicknames from my peers.
I was also Bugs, Goofy, and Mortimer Snerd (of Edgar Bergen/Charlie McCarthy fame).

So, the nurse (forgive me for forgetting her name) asked if I’d heard of a city program for kids like me with severe overbites. Of course, I hadn’t. She explained that New York City had a special grant program that would cover orthodontic work for unique cases, IF the orthodontist’s treatment for the problem needed to be advanced or innovative.

She didn’t just tell me about it.
She arranged for me to see one of those orthodontists.

This particular doc said he could correct my overbite without removing any of my back teeth, which at the time was a pretty radical approach.

That dedicated school nurse?
She didn’t stop there.
She helped me navigate the bureaucracy and administrivia of the grant approval process. And guess what?

It worked.

Courtesy of NYC, I was the recipient of a $5,000 orthodontia job (a huge sum back then).  My braces were fully covered.

I went home and told my mother. She cried tears of joy. Then she told me something I’ll never forget:

“I’d look at you across the room, listening to the radio” she said, 
“And I know you are an A student. But with those buck teeth, you looked… retarded.”

Her word, not mine. Different time.

I was an honest-to-goodness mouth breather.  I couldn’t close my mouth to breathe through my nose, especially while sleeping.

We couldn’t afford orthodontia. That’s why she cried.

I wore those braces for three years, right up until just before high school graduation.

I don’t know exactly how much they improved my looks, but I know what they did for my self-esteem.

That nurse helped unlock something in me. Confidence.
The kind that helped me excel in high school, go on to college, and eventually build a relatively successful military career.

No more Bugs. No more Goofy. No more Mortimer Snerd.

Enuf.