It is not the critic who counts: not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes up short again and again … who spends himself in a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows, in the end, the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly.
—Teddy Roosevelt
Teddy Roosevelt, our 26th president, was the first president to ride in a car, a submarine, an airplane, a subway train, and a camel. He won the Nobel Peace prize and swam naked in the Potomac River. He worked tirelessly to conserve land and his legacy lives on in every national park he helped create.
President Roosevelt understood that those who actually DO things, innovate, think, act, and occasionally step beyond the crowd, are often criticized by others who prefer to follow a customary script, lurk in the shadows, or prefer to take the obvious, well-trodden path along with most everyone else.
Joe Kline, a writer for Time Magazine, annually lists politicians who he believes qualify for his “Teddy Award” by showing outstanding courage. They make hard, sane decisions, knowing that they will be criticized.
Shamelessly borrowing from Mr. Kline’s idea, I want to solicit from our readers the names of wildland fire managers who exhibit the same traits. In a comment below, nominate someone, and tell us why this person is deserving of a 2014 Wildland Fire Teddy Award. They can be from any agency, company, or country, as long as they have a significant contribution to wildland fire.
I’ll get it started with a group nomination for managers in Yosemite and Everglades National Parks who arranged for very high-quality videos to be produced that educate the public about wildland fires and prescribed fires. These videos are near-broadcast-quality and could be proudly shown in many different settings. There must have been a significant cost involved, something many people and agencies would shy away from, but the products are outstanding and well worth the investment. We have seen other videos produced by agencies, probably at little or no cost, that were very badly done.
These nominated videos were produced by the National Park Service. There is another example of a quality video commissioned by an incident management team, or perhaps the U.S. Forest Service. We wrote about it on Wildfire Today, but I can’t find the article that described it. It was about an ongoing fire, I believe in northern California, likey in the summer of 2014. It was produced by a filmmaker based in Colorado who also takes fire assignments as an Information Officer. Let us know if you have information about it, the name of the fire, or the web address where it was described.
