 "Photo: R. K. Liggin")
 "Photo: Greg Helmerick")
 "Photo: Greg Helmerick")
It was easy this week, commemorating the lives lost five years ago during the 9/ll attacks, to remember that we should remember our heroes. It's harder for us to recognize that we should remember them in our everyday lives. Harder still to find them.
Oh, I don't mean that firewomen and men and Marines and such don't rate just because they aren't saving lives every minute of the day. I mean that brushing through our lives, right here, right now, asking for nothing more than the chance to make their own way are handfuls of heroes unsung. They may not be pulling people out of burning buildings or protecting a nation against terrorists, but they are heroes nonetheless. Heroes of a quieter sort.
Meet Greg Helmerick. He's a senior at our own beloved UCD campus. Greg moved to Colorado with his family back in 1991 with nothing more on his mind than filling time. Five years later, hammering away at a solid banking job, Greg matriculated at Red Rocks Community Collage in Lakewood with - much like the rest of us - no clear direction, purpose or goal. Setting aside vague and untenable dreams of becoming an astronomer, he opted instead - again, much like the rest of us - to pursue something far more pragmatic, a B.A. in English. Perhaps he would never be the next Hemmingway, but teaching would sure be a way to earn a living. And there's nobility in teaching. Stability, too. Security. Not the most Kodak of lives, but at least he would eat.
It didn't take long for Greg to fall in love - with Colorado's mountains. High peaks are his game. To date he's summited all but 12 of the fourteeners, with 15 of the highest thriteeners to boot. It won't be long before the rest of the fourteeners fall to him. Finally, something had meaning in life, and with it a reshuffling of priorities: fun was in...school? Not so much.
And we've seen this before. Hell, many of us have lived this. Still live this.
It's not surprising, then, that Greg put school and degrees and tedious hours of homework on the way-backburner, focusing instead on getting out and bagging peaks. Meanwhile he still had his banking career, which, while not taking off like rockets, still provided a damn fine paycheck and was paving a secure road to future financial stability. The job was cush, he liked his boss, his coworkers - and there were beers after every mountain he climbed.
Who would turn their back on a middle-class American wet dream like this?
Were Greg's story to end here, his wouldn't be any more exceptional than the thousands - millions! - of others who plug along, courting security and soaking down into a life less arresting. One problem: Greg's story doesn't end here; he's not going to cling to the secure and easy future.
Greg is a climber, and one thing climbers learn to embrace is the ineffable and un-chartable value of risk. Somewhere along the way Greg decided that security and financial reward were not enough. Somewhere along the way he realized that his creative ambitions were withering, unchallenged and untapped. If left that way life would reduce to an endless succession of paychecks and peaks. Not horrible, but not inspired either. Enter a new reshuffling of priorities.
Greg bought a camera, a sweet, but less-than-hotshot digital SLR camera. With cameras come pictures, and with these pictures came a burgeoning desire to shoot professionally. Then he began penning mountaineering articles for an online climbing journal. Then he backed into a Web designing class that he couldn't get enough of. On top of everything else, Greg decided to return to school full time and finish that once forgotten English degree - this time not to teach, but to write.
It's not that Greg is choosing the harder career; he's choosing the one harder to commit to. The world doesn't ask us to be creators; that's a choice we have to force onto it. Greg's choice now means that he's up at 4 a.m. every morning to cram in that dreaded homework, turn in his forty hours at the bank and somehow manage online and night classes. Never mind the high blood pressure or the big 4-0 GPA he's pushing for or the fact that he's paying for school himself - nearly every last dime. He's fighting, and he's winning, and that's enough to make him a hero.
So that's it. There are no glamorous climaxes here. No surprise catches. Greg doesn't suffer from any debilitating diseases or have to put his tragic, alcoholic mother into a home. He just wants to be an on-demand mountaineering photographer/freelance magazine writer who also happens to design Web sites for a living, that's all. More than anything, he wants to create, and he's willing to suffer the grind in order to do it.
Perhaps that's more poetic than heroic. It's certainly not the stuff Hollywood dreams are made of. But there's magic here in the margins, in living a life small, but authentic. His may never shine like the proverbial star, but Greg understands firsthand the courage it takes to stand next to the fire. In the end, corny as it sounds, he simply believes in himself - and that's more hero than a lot of people will ever know.
And who knows, maybe he will be the next Hemmingway. Never know until you try.
Readers interested in knowing Mr. Helmerick or his work better should drop by his website at www.greghelmerick.com.
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