IT IS ONE OF THE ODDITIES OF MY LIFE THAT MY MOTHER SET the vision for the manhood I would aspire to all my days. She had grown up in the home of an army officer who was temporarily paralyzed while fighting in Germany during World War II and who then served as an aide to General Douglas MacArthur in the Far East. She later married a newly minted second lieutenant who would eventually fight in Vietnam and serve as an intelligence chief in Berlin during the bitter days of the Cold War. She knew something of what it meant to be a man and she wanted her son to be one. Her most stinging rebuke usually came in the form of a plea: “Will you be a man?” She was a teacher by nature and often worked lessons of manhood into our long hours of conversation. “That’s not what a man does,” she would say quietly, perhaps after reading in the newspaper about a crime or a family impoverished by drink. If one of my father’s fellow officers behaved heroically, my mother would declare simply, reverently, “Well, he’s a man,” as though the word man captured all that was grand and valiant in the world.
How very much I wanted to embody her transcendent vision of manhood. I still do.
I left my parents’ home and stepped out into the world when true masculinity was already in crisis. That was in the 1970s. Manliness was perceived as little more than a style. It was signaled by a cologne rather than a condition of soul. It took only a few genuine men in my life to convince me that my generation of males were becoming androgynous and calling it liberation. In time, they would find it wasn’t liberating anyone.
Nothing confirmed this for me like the day I spent with UCLA coach John Wooden. Confirmation came also from the years I spent studying and writing about Winston Churchill, unquestionably my hero and my model for manly greatness. Through the years, I’ve had the privilege of knowing men like Lieutenant General William Boykin, of being embedded with US troops in Iraq, of naming among my friends members of Delta Force, and of walking with men who exhibit honor in arenas as varied as the surgical theater and the community center, Monday Night Football and the high school classroom.
I also remember tearfully thinking that the young man without arms and legs who boarded a bus every morning in downtown Nashville to go to work twenty miles away—and did so with joy and a smile for everyone he passed—was probably the greatest man I had ever seen.
I grew to understand a bit about righteous manhood and loved recounting stories of manly greatness with like-hearted friends. No one exulted in this like my friend Jim Laffoon. He would goad me into describing Churchill, Alfred the Great, or perhaps Lincoln and then would exclaim with delight, “My God! Now that was a man, don’t you think, Steve? I mean, he was man!” We would talk late into the night, telling tales as though trying to keep a flame of masculinity lit for our generation.
This generational hope is what inspired Joel Miller, my publisher at Thomas Nelson, to envision this book and its design. I am grateful. He is a true manly man who lives out righteous manhood in sacrificial ways few ever see. I could not ask for a better partner in the tumultuous business of books.
My daughter, Elizabeth, helped edit this manuscript and it was sweet to have her thoughtful comments as a guide. As we worked together one day, she told me she hoped her future husband would look something like the men described in these pages. Don’t worry, baby; I intend to make sure of it!
Numerous friends contributed material as I wrote. My fellow warrior, David Holland, helped with extensive research. His vision of history was invaluable, as it has been on some of my other projects. Crazed Italian Todd Bulgarino, one of the finest fathers I know, also provided material, as did George Grant and, again, Joel Miller. When General Boykin’s foreword arrived, it made me eager to be both a better man and a better writer. I’m honored his spirit hovers over these pages.
Finally, all I am I offer to Bev, whose womanly ways keep me ever in hope of becoming the man she deserves.