When my son was nine years old (he is now 13), I remember standing in my local town library with him encouraging him to find heroes that excited him.
Like many of us, I had grown up on Louis L’Amour, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Ray Bradbury, Robert Heinlein, and more, but I didn’t know if Western heroes, John Carter of Mars, Tarzan, or science-fiction heroes from the mid-20th century would resonate with him. Still, I looked on those library shelves for those good guys with six-shooters and laser guns but could not find any of it in the youth section—a few of the titles were upstairs among the adult fiction.
He flipped through Harry Potter books, The Hunger Games stuff, and more and kept shaking his head.
“I don’t know dad, all these guys are dumb.”
“What do you mean?”
“There is always some girl who has to think for the boy,” he said. “That’s great for the girls, but I want a book where the boy hero is not stupid and, you know, where he does something cool.”
I started to say that Harry Potter was the main hero in those books, but before I spoke, I remembered that the girl characters in those stories actually do all the hard thinking. I then swallowed all the advice I’d give later on men and women and realized he was right to want a hero that resonates with him.
“What about the history stuff—all the cool heroes from history?” I said as I walked to peruse the nonfiction in the youth section. He didn’t follow, but I took a look. There were a lot of books on those shelves, but it was all weak and politically correct—some of it was obnoxiously so.
I found him looking at comic books and asked what American heroes they had been talking about in school.
He shrugged.
I pushed and he said, “We were talking about Paul Revere, but he just road some horse and shouted the ‘British are coming!’”
“Do you know that the British were marching out of Boston to take the peoples’ guns?” I asked.
He looked at me.
“Did you talk about the ‘shot heard ‘round the world’?”
He shook his head.
“Did you know that the British in Boston, under General Thomas Gage, actually seized Paul Revere’s guns?”
“No, why?”
I told him I’d tell him the whole story at bedtime. That night, as I told the story, I realized a book needed to be written for this generation. These heroes, and all the truth about them, needs to be told to our boys. They need heroes to follow. So, I began to research and to write Cool Heroes for Boys—20 True Tales of Adventure, an adventure-laden book where every story is about a 15-minute read—the ideal length for a bedtime story.
A few years after that library visit, my son (Christian) and I went to Boston to walk the Freedom Trail on the anniversary of the shot heard round the world; in fact, over the years of research for this book, we’ve gone together to explore the history of many of the other heroes, so much so that I began to call my son Cool Heroes for Boys’ first and most-important editor. If a story or hero did not thrill him it was rewritten or axed. I didn’t want a book that entertained me. I wanted one that blew his hair back.
Along the way, freedom—especially our Second Amendment-protected freedom—became a big part of our exploration, as boys need the actions scenes. He sat up when he found out that George Washington had two horses shot out from under him in the Battle of Monogahela; the story of Sergeant Alvin York’s capture of the German soldier thrilled him, but most of his questions were why York, at first, did not want to fight; he wanted to see the revolver Sam Walker fought with and was blown away by how it helped to win the West; a young Teddy Roosevelt’s pursuit of outlaws in Dakota Territory made him want to hunt bad guys; and he really wanted to know why Davy Crockett stood against then President Andrew Jackson and how and why he died fighting at the Alamo.
What I found is, as participants in the outdoor, shooting, and hunting part of American culture, we live this freedom and hopefully expose our children to its adventure, responsibility, and practicality, but even we often struggle with how to teach the history of our freedom to the next generation—I know I did until I started this quest.
Telling the next generation about the Second Amendment, and how it is the right that protects all the other rights, and safely teaching them to shoot are, fundamental, but are not enough; if we leave them without understanding the true history and the nature of our freedom, then we’ll leave them vulnerable to anti-gun teachers or professors who might deceptively turn them against this individual right—I know quite a few parents who don’t understand why or how their sons or daughters were turned against their own freedom.
The truth, and the understanding of how to critically think, is the armor that questions and then defeats ideologies designed to convince young minds that our freedom—especially our right to keep and bear arms—needs to be voted away.
– Frank Miniter
