A novel idea

A novel idea

I must thank you for publishing a letter regarding the
initially somewhat bizarre notion of opening a special cemetery
to accommodate "heroic" civil servants (The Jakarta Post, Jan.
23, 2001).

It was such a novel idea that I was prompted by idle curiosity
and a little time on my hands to look up the word hero to see if
it could in fact be applied routinely to civil servants who die
while working, as the writer suggests. Here is what I found:

hero [hj'ro], noun, a man of distinguished bravery; any
illustrious person; a person reverenced and idealized; the
principal male figure, or the one whose life is the thread of the
story, in a history, work of fiction, play, film, etc.;
originally a man of superhuman powers, a demigod:

heroine [her'o-in], a female hero.

Sadly for your contributor, the current definition does not
seem to indicate that people who die while doing what they are
paid to do should be awarded this title. Indeed, if these
definitions are indeed accurate, occupancy rates in any new
heroes' cemetery might be extremely low as few, if any candidates
would seem to qualify.

However, it would be tragic if a hero or heroine, from
whatever background, was to die and we had nowhere to put them. I
therefore give this initially peculiar and yet ultimately
charming notion my qualified support.

In order to be both fair and practical, I feel it would be
better not to limit the type of occupant by career background.
More importantly, I would urge those whose job it is to heroize,
to apply the definitions perhaps more carefully than has hitherto
been the case -- otherwise, almost anyone could become a hero and
the project could become extremely costly. Real heroes and
heroines would seem to be sadly rather thin on the ground just
now.

ROSS GULLIVER

Jakarta