Feel free to read each story (over 100 to choose from!) and listen to the video presentation embedded at the end of each story. Links are also available to access stories from the “Bully Alert” series along with “Life Lessons” from “A Reflection of Your Future.”

As a young boy, he was very athletic, and he participated in sports a lot.

He had big plans as an athlete, that is, until his family moved to a farm in Oklahoma.

Then he thought his athletic career was over, but to his surprise, it was just beginning!

By the time he was in high school, he made All State in both football and baseball!

When he went to college, Troy Aikman played football for the University of Oklahoma.

And then in 1989, he became quarterback for the Dallas Cowboys.

After leading his team to many victories, which included winning three Super Bowls, Troy Aikman was inducted into the Football Hall of Fame, and considered one of the greatest NFL quarterbacks of all time.

Today, Troy Aikman says there is nothing more important than the health and well being of children.

In 1992, he started the Troy Aikman Foundation.

There is even an online computer to let children talk to other children in other hospitals.

They can even see each other by video communication.

Troy Aikman has also written some books, including a children’s book called Things Change.  He uses the money from his books to help children.

Yes, Troy Aikman became a football hero by helping his team to many victories, but today he has become an even bigger hero by helping thousands of children in so many different ways.

I’m Jim Lord.  That’s what I know about the beginning of this hero, and I know that you can become a hero, too!

Her father, Daniel Anthony was a very stern man, and he carefully guided his children.

Susan grew up learning about self-discipline and strong convictions, and courage to do things that she knew ought to be done.

She was only three years old when she learned to read and write!

Later, Mr. Anthony sent Susan to a boarding school near Philadelphia.

Soon, she became a teacher at a boarding school.

That’s when she discovered that men who did the same job as she was doing got paid a lot more money than women.

She knew that could not be right.

And only men could vote.

“That certainly was not right, either,” she thought.

Women should have the same rights as men!

So, Susan did something about it — she VOTED!!  That took a lot of courage, too!

No woman in America had ever done that before!

Well, at first she got into a lot of trouble for doing that, but later people began to realize she was right — women should indeed be able to vote just like men.

And women should be paid the same as men for doing the same job.

That’s what became known as “equal rights.”

Her efforts to bring about fairness took a long time to really catch on, but she is the one who started people seriously thinking about “equal rights for women.”

You see, she had the courage to stand up and tell people that what they were doing was wrong!

Today, you can see her picture on the silver one-dollar coin as a way to honor her, because Susan B. Anthony certainly was a hero.

I’m Jim Lord.  That’s what I know about the beginning of this hero, and I know that you can become a hero, too!

Even as a young boy, Lance was very athletic.

He began training by running and swimming when he was only 10 years old.

By age 13, he was competing.

It was also at age 13 that he took up cycling.

When he was 16, he became a professional athlete.

Soon he concentrated only on cycling as he attempted to become the best in the world.

He began winning world class competition after world class competition.

Then, in 1996, Lance Armstrong learned he had cancer.

He became very sick, but is winning spirit never failed.

He turned his attention to winning the fight against cancer in his own body.

The more he learned, though, the more he wanted to take an active part in helping others who suffered from this terrible disease, even though he was very sick, himself.

He started The Lance Armstrong Foundation which is dedicated to uniting people to fight cancer.

He said that unity is strength, knowledge is power, and attitude is everything.

Lance did not know if he would live or die.

But he did survive, and when he got well, he trained harder than ever to become as good as he had been before – even better!

That’s when he entered the Tour de France, a two-thousand two-hundred mile bicycle race – the greatest in the world.

And he won!

Then, for the next six years, he entered and won again and again…seven years in a row.

He is the only person ever to do that.

In 2005, Lance retired from cycling to work  full time helping people fight cancer.

Today, he and his foundation help thousands of cancer patients every year, which makes Lance Armstrong a very special hero.

I’m Jim Lord.  That’s what I know about the beginning of a hero, and I know that you can become a hero, too!

When he was a small child, his favorite book was “20,000 Thousand Leagues Under the Sea.” by Jules Verne.

He wanted to be an underwater explorer when he grew up, and to his surprise, when he told his mom and dad, they didn’t laugh!

Instead, they said, “Maybe you need to become an Oceanographer.”  They actually encouraged him to live his dream.

Well, young Robert did start living his dream.

In school, he studied hard in all his subjects, especially science.

He learned all he could about undersea life, and sunken ships, and underwater land formations.

When Robert grew up, he became an officer in the Navy, and after that, he became an explorer.

In 1985, Robert Ballard and his helpers designed a special submarine that would take a crew over 12-thousand feet below the surface of the ocean.

That’s over 2-miles straight down!

With that special submarine, he was able to find the most famous shipwreck of the twentieth century – the R.M.S. Titanic.

He has also made many other discoveries.

But Dr. Ballard is more than an explorer.

He is a teacher, and has created a program for fourth graders, all the way through 9th graders, to learn about the science of ocean exploration.

He also spends a lot of his time visiting students in schools all over America, and teaching them to live their dreams, just as he has done.

Robert Ballard has not only lived his dream… in the process, he has become a hero!

I’m Jim Lord.  That’s what I know about the beginning of a hero, and I know that you can become a hero, too.

There was no television in the Branson home, so young Ricky, as they called him then, watched carefully as his mother would make things to sell in stores.

His father would make simple tools and machines to help make the things Mrs. Branson would design easier to build.

Richard was always ready for an adventure or a challenge, and his parents were always there to encourage him to do his best at whatever he did.

As he grew older, he began more and more wanting to find ways to help other people.

Richard was only 16 years old when he started a Student Magazine at his school, and a year later he opened what he called a Student Advisory Centre, to help young people.

He was only 20 years old when he started what became one of the largest music companies in the world.

He called it Virgin Records, and in 1992 he sold that company for 1-billion dollars!

From there, he started over 200 other companies — everything from cell phones to airlines!

And created jobs for over 55-thousand people!

But Richard Branson also helps people in many other ways.

He helps people start their own businesses, and he gives away millions and millions of dollars to help provide food and jobs for very poor people in Africa and in other areas around the world.

Yes, that little Ricky Branson, who grew up in a loving and caring family in England – that boy who was always ready for an adventure – that boy grew up to become an amazing hero!

I’m Jim Lord.  That’s what I know about the beginning of this hero, and I know that you can become a hero, too!

Jimmy was born in the fall of 1924 on a peanut farm near Plains, Georgia.

When he was just a small boy, Jimmy had to help work in the peanut fields.

It gets terribly hot in the summer time in Georgia, and Jimmy’s job was to get drinking water and bring it in big buckets to the men working in the fields.

It was not an easy job, but he did it anyway, and he did it well.

What he wanted to do most of all was to work the fields, with a mule and a plow, to make the long rows where the peanuts would be planted, but he had to grow bigger and older before his father finally let him practice plowing in the garden by their house.

As he grew toward becoming a man, Jimmy learned how to do all of the jobs around the farm.

Even today, as a much older man, Jimmy is still working very hard.

Today he also helps to build houses for people who are too poor to buy or build one for themselves.

He volunteers his time for an organization called Habitat for Humanity.

And sometimes he visits with leaders of other countries to talk about peace in the world.

Only now they call him President Jimmy Carter, because the little boy who worked so hard in the peanut fields grew up to later become the 39th President of the United States of America.

Yes, that little boy grew up to became a hero in a lot of different ways!

I’m Jim Lord.  That’s what I know about the beginning of this hero, and I know that you can become a hero, too!

FEEL FREE TO READ EACH STORY (OVER 100 TO CHOOSE FROM!) AND LISTEN TO THE VIDEO PRESENTATION EMBEDDED AT THE END OF EACH STORY. LINKS ARE ALSO AVAILABLE TO ACCESS STORIES FROM THE “BEGINNING OF A HERO” SERIES ALONG WITH “LIFE LESSONS” FROM “A REFLECTION OF YOUR FUTURE.”

Mr. Delaney, who was just plain famous for his storytelling, often liked talking about his father, Henry Delaney.

“It was my father,” said Mr. Delaney, “who first taught me about heroes helping and bullies hurting.”

Mr. Delaney said that when young Henry was in school, it was pretty common for boys to play tricks on girls.

“Back then,” he said, “they didn’t have ball point pens and markers – they had fountain pens that had to be dipped in ink after writing every few words. So every student’s desk had a jar of black ink built into the desk.”

Mr. Delaney went on to explain that when a girl was sitting in front of a boy, the boy often thought it was funny to dip the end of the girl’s hair in the ink.

A lot of girls had ink stains at the ends of their long hair. The girls would be furious, and the boys would laugh even more.

Not Henry, though.

He could see that those boys were just bullies, because they were hurting the girls, and he would stop the boys every time he could.

He was nice to the girls and they all liked him very much.

They considered him to be their hero.

“In fact, when they got a little older,” said Mr. Delaney, “one of those same girls married him, and she became my mother!

“‘Heroes help and bullies hurt,’ my dad would always tell me. ‘Heroes are winners and bullies are losers,’ he would say.

And then he would look at my mother and say, ‘I’m a winner!’”

Yes, Mr. Delaney learned from a very early age just how much heroes indeed are winners!

I’m Jim Lord. That’s what I know about the beginning of this hero, and I know that you can become a hero, too!

Jamie and his dad were standing in line waiting for the lady at the register to take their order for lunch.

It was something they had always done—a father and son day one Saturday a month, rain or shine.

The man in front of them had just ordered two grilled chicken sandwiches and two orders of fries.

When the lady repeated back the order, the man became very angry, and said, “ONE order of fries, ONE order of fries, don’t you listen?!”

And then he said some other things to her that brought tears to her eyes.

“Dad, that man said two orders of fries, I heard him,” said Jamie. “I know, I heard him, too.”

“But, Dad, he’s acting like a bully—can grown-ups be bullies, too?!”

“OH yeah,” said his dad. “Yes we can.” Well, it was now their turn to order lunch, and Jamie’s dad, being as friendly as he possibly could, placed the order.

And then he said to the lady, “I would like to apologize for that man who was just here, since he doesn’t seem willing to apologize for himself.”

The lady smiled through the tears that were still in her eyes, and thanked him.

“Look,” he said, “I have a couple of free passes to the movie theater—maybe you can use one and invite a friend to go along.”

The lady’s tears came back a little, and then she said quietly, “Thanks, you’re very kind.”

Jamie knew that he and his dad had planned to use those movie passes that evening, but you know what?

He didn’t mind at all.

What he had seen that day meant more to him than any movie could!

All in the same two minutes he had seen a first class bully, and a first class hero.

Jamie always thought he wanted to grow up to be just like his dad—now, he knew it, without a doubt!

I’m Jim Lord. That’s what I know about the beginning of this hero, and I know that YOU can become a HERO, too!