“A true hero enshrines his individual identity by surrendering it . . .”

Thus wrote historian David A. Smith, in the Dallas Morning News, May 27, 2013.

Cook Third Class Doris Miller, a mess attendant on the battleship U.S.S. West Virginia at Pearl Harbor, on December 7, 1941 became the first black man awarded the Navy Cross for heroism in combat. 

With his ship under attack, burning and holed by two torpedoes, Miller moved wounded sailors to safety and manned a machine gun against enemy planes. A year later he died when a Japanese submarine sank another ship in which he served. 

Citizens in Waco, Texas, have designed a memorial to Miller on the banks of the Brazos River.

Author Smith concluded, 

“Memorializing someone isn’t merely an act of remembering them. To memorialize is to allow the memory of a person to adjust the way we live our lives.”