See Also:
Beginning of a FAMOUS Hero: The Robert Ballard Story.
Life Lesson #18 – Effort is Greater Than Ability.
Jack was a small boy who was not very strong. In fact, the doctors had said he really shouldn’t do many physical things. But Jack refused to accept that. His family spent the summers at their beach home in France, and he loved playing and swimming in the Atlantic Ocean. He loved watching the ships move across the ocean, and he loved throwing stones in the water.
Jack also liked studying machines and building small machines that really worked. When he was only 11 years old, he built a model of an ocean crane. When he was 13, he invented a small working electric car that ran on batteries. People were amazed! Shortly after that, home movie cameras began to be sold in stores and Jack saved his money to buy one. He loved making films and dreamed of having his own movie making company someday. Water, machines, and movies. Those were Jack’s favorite things, and it was his use of those three things that eventually made him a HERO.
Jack was actually named Jacques… Jacques Cousteau. He was born in France during the early 1900s. That small boy who was not very strong became an excellent underwater swimmer, and so that he could stay underwater for long periods of time, he invented the Aqua-lung, a machine that would allow people to breathe and stay underwater. It also allowed him to take his movie camera in a water-tight case down to the ocean floor and capture on film what people had never been able to see before. Eventually Jacques Cousteau did start his own movie making company. He won three academy awards for his undersea films and he wrote books about sea life. Jacques Cousteau was the first to show people the beauty of the ocean and the importance of taking care of it. Jacques Cousteau became a HERO.
– Jim Lord