When I was a little boy, parents in America would tell their kids, "When you grow up, you can be president."  Most of them probably weren't thinking of Warren G. Harding, Martin van Buren, or James Buchanan. 

They were thinking of heroic presidents, the kind we used to celebrate in February when elementary school children studied the lives of Abraham Lincoln and George Washington. Each of those presidents had their own day back then.

Now we have President's Day.  The banks and the post office and government offices are closed. This is one of those three day weekends were a lot of the "public servants" have the day off while most of the public works.

There's not a lot of excitement.  There aren't many Presidents' Day Parades.

You could make a case that Lincoln and Washington were heroic figures and you could study their lives one at a time. But it's hard to celebrate a bunch of guys when the only thing they seem to have in common is getting elected president of the United States.

Plus, we've decided that we don't believe in heroes any more.  Viet Nam and Watergate seemed to fix that for us.  We decided that there were no heroes.

Some of us decided that because we suddenly realized that heroes were also human beings and therefore flawed.  Some of us decided that because we thought that believing in heroes was like believing in magic.

We still believe in magic, of course.  We believe in magical diets and magical success through a "reality" TV show and that magical management fad that will make all things profitable.

Forget that nonsense.  Let's get back to looking at the lives of great Americans for clues to what we, individually and collectively, can become.

Since it's President's Day, start with a president.  Pop over to the White House web site and you'll find a list of them, along with a brief biography.  Pick one.
http://www.whitehouse.gov/history/presidents/

You can find out more using Google (http://www.google.com) or Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page) or anywhere else you choose.

To get you started, here's some good reading about heroic folks who were also presidents.

Lincoln by David Herbert Donald
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ISBN=068482535X/wallybock/

Washington: The Indispensable Man by James Thomas Flexner
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ISBN=0316286168/wallybock/

John Adams: Party of One by James Grant
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ISBN=0374113149/wallybock/

Team of Rivals by Doris Kearns Goodwin
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ISBN=0684824906/wallybock/

Andrew Jackson by H. W. Brands
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ISBN=0385507380/wallybock/

Franklin Delano Roosevelt by Conrad Black
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ISBN=1586481843/wallybock/

His Excellency: George Washington by Joseph Ellis
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ISBN=1400040310/wallybock/

Grant by Jean Edward Smith
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ISBN=0684849275/wallybock/