Real Life Heroes Being Recognized

Warning this is not about CrossFit at all!

Boseman in his Black Panther uniform

Chadwick Boseman is best known for one of his most recent roles in which he played the lead role in the Black Panther movie. The movie received great reviews and will without a doubt be one of the best movies of 2018. I myself enjoyed this movie a lot and would recommend it to anyone. Amongst many awards Chadwick has won for the movie, one of the most recent was the “Best Hero” award at the MTV Movie Awards. What happened next surprised a lot of people and made me an even bigger fan of the actor. Boseman gave his award to a man named James Shaw Jr., who many consider a real life hero. Boseman said in a speech, “While its nice to idolize the heroes we have in movies, we should not forget to honor those heroes we have in real life.” He then proceeded to give his award to Shaw Jr.

Back in April Shaw Jr. was dining late one night at a waffle house on the outskirts of Nashville, Tennessee. While dining at the waffle house a gunman had opened fire with a rifle into the restaurant and when he had stopped shooting momentarily Shaw saw it as an opportunity to take action. He grabbed the barrel of the gun and wrestled with the gunman until he was able to take the gun away from him. This saved many lives as there were still many people in the Waffle House who could have been targeted.

The interesting thing in this situation is Shaws response to being hailed a hero. He told the press on multiple occasions that he was not necessarily acting in the interest of saving others, but rather he was acting to save his own life. In an article which you can find here, he said, “I’m not a hero, I’m jut a completely regular person,” he later goes on to say, “It was just, I figured if I was going to

Shaw at a news conference with law enforcement officials

die, he was going to have to work for it.” Obviously in this situation his pursuit to save his own life saved many others, which he easily could have said was his primary motivation. I also give him credit for not abusing the limelight he has been in as he was truthful in a situation where he easily could have bent the truth to be put on a higher pedestal. I still commend him greatly for having the courage to rise to the occasion in a life or death situation. Regardless of his motivation he did something extraordinary and deserves                                                                                                           commemoration for his act.

 

Check out this article and video for more info!

Video of the Speech 

NPR article

 

5 replies

Leave a Reply

Want to join the discussion?
Feel free to contribute!

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *