Since the recent election there has been a revised interest in the nature of character. Just how significant are personal character and virtue in the conduct of our national leaders?
David Brooks in his book, The Road to Character, attempts to identify some qualities that determine character. He reviews the lives of great leaders like Dwight Eisenhower, George Marshall, Dorothy Day, and St Augustine to mention a few.
Their personalities were different, but they had these virtues in common: humility, a sense of a calling, the desire to serve, self-awareness and personal discipline.
Today, taking seriously the subject of virtue may seem as outdated as leeches for bleeding patients or wearing garlic to keep vampires at bay. Virtue, I believe, represents the best of what we can be.
As I take Brook’s point, the greatness of those around us, ennobles us and inspires us to reach higher.
Some twenty years ago, I had a very privileged experience. I met a man and grew fond of him. I suspect there was an element of hero worship for me in that I knew he was a retired Rear Admiral. Like my father, he was a man who had served in WWII. Not until shortly before he died did I know the breadth and depth of his service to our country and the world. This man was a hero in the best sense of the word. His name was Rafael Celestino Benitez. We all knew him as Rafe.
He was the epitome of the Renaissance man: conversant in literature, experienced in politics, seasoned in the art of war, but especially that he was always curious, wondering about the spiritual questions that waft though everyone’s minds at one time or another. For most of us they just die there. They never died in his mind.
Rafe thought deeply, seeking the truths that guided human affairs. He was thoughtful, but not opinionated. He had a big heart. Rafe, a native of Puerto Rico, was a lawyer and fluent in Spanish. When he retired in Easton, he frequently helped Hispanic migrants in their legal difficulties.
I’d been in a men’s group with Rafe. We explored spiritual issues. I cannot remember the context, but he once quoted a line from Gray’s epic poem that went thus: “Full many a flower is born to blush unseen, to waste its sweetness on the desert air.” The lines imprinted themselves in my memory. As I look back on my time with him, I wonder whether the words may have been prophetic, in the sense they were descriptive of Rafe’s way of being in the world. He never called undue attention to himself although during his life he had profound influence on the world around him. He served as chief of the United States naval mission to Cuba and after retirement became Pan American World Airways vice president for Latin America. He was remarkably humble and I only learned the extent of his heroism when I read a book documenting America’s submarine warfare.
Reading the book and through others I learned of his heroism in the Pacific during WWII. During the cold war, in a submarine spy mission, the Cochino’s (his sub), battery caught fire. He assured the safety of his crew and stayed with the burning sub until the crew was rescued and it was obvious there was no way to save the boat. He then boarded the rescue ship. He received the Silver Star, the Gold star and the bronze star for “conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity” and “being an inspiration to the officers and men of his ship in evading enemy countermeasures.”
Even before I knew the extent of his courage and gallantry there was a certain aura about the man. It’s hard to describe, but it’s something like sensing the depth of character that’s hosted in a person of disarming humility. It’s hard to understate virtue because it’s so conspicuous in those who have it.
Rafe had been working on book. It was to be his legacy. He asked me one day if I would join him on a trip to Annapolis to take his final manuscript to the publishers. Of course, I was honored. We went to the Naval Academy afterward and he showed me where his class roster of 1939 was posted. He reminisced about his days at the Academy. Interestingly he didn’t seem interested in telling war stories.
Shortly before Rafe died he gave me copy of his book. It’s called Anchors: Ethical and Practical Maxims. It’s small, spare, and the maxims are delivered without any flourish. They are clear and unambiguous. He wrote a note in my copy. I share it because I believe it makes a point about the nature of greatness.
“To George Merrill whose thoughtful insights were of help to me in the developments of Anchors.” Of course, I was deeply flattered. I can’t imagine saying anything that might have remotely informed his book. Having said that, however, I see in his kind inscription something else; it’s what great men or women offer us. In our association with them and in their service to others we are the ones who are ennobled because of the virtues they possess. It’s like being illuminated for just standing in sunlight.
Anchor’s first maxim reads simply: “Steadfastly seek moral excellence, a standard achieved when virtues such as integrity, fidelity, honesty and the like become a natural part of your inner person.”
In the dialogue in Plato’s Meno, the question is raised, ‘Can virtue be taught?’ The conclusion is, it can’t be. But it’s the wrong question. ‘Can virtue be learned?’ is the right question – and I believe it can.
I think virtue is communicated by inspiration. As we engage with great men and women, they leave us a legacy the way Rafe did for many. The legacy is simple. It inspires the feeling: “I want to be like that.”
Columnist George Merrill is an Episcopal Church priest and pastoral psychotherapist. A writer and photographer, he’s authored two books on spirituality: Reflections: Psychological and Spiritual Images of the Heart and The Bay of the Mother of God: A Yankee Discovers the Chesapeake Bay. He is a native New Yorker, previously directing counseling services in Hartford, Connecticut, and in Baltimore. George’s essays, some award winning, have appeared in regional magazines and are broadcast twice monthly on Delmarva Public Radio.
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