No Rambo Here

There is a welcome antidote to Rambo among the 13 Americans and 9 Canadians honored the other day by the Carnegie Hero Fund Commission.

They did not venture to a foreign land to mutilate an anonymous enemy with automatic gunfire. But they risked as much: Six of them died in their rescue attempts.

In age they ranged from Edith Marie MacInnis, 13, from Prince Edward Island, who helped save another youngster from drowning, to Robert A. Conner, 66, of St. Petersburg, Fla., who tried to revive a heart-attack victim on a tennis court. Some braved fire or the high seas, one wrestled with an armed assailant in a courtroom, another snatched a child from the tracks as a train approached. And one we will never know about, because he asked that his identity and his deed be kept secret.

They were men and women, store clerks, retired executives, truckers, students, railroad workers, salesmen, housewives, people from every walk of life, going about their business, but somehow prepared to risk everything for the life of another. Real heroes.