Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, arrives for a House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis on the Capitol Hill in Washington, Thursday, April 15, 2021. (Amr Alfiky/The New York Times via AP, Pool)

I’m one of those people who still gets a lump in my throat whenever I hear the National Anthem played, look up and see the stars and stripes waving in the breeze, or see the troops marching by me in a 4th of July parade. I can’t help it, and I make no apologies for the emotions that run through me.

To me, America has always been a place of dreams that are both great and small. It is a place that harbors the deepest hopes that run the thorny gauntlet of being foolish, somewhat elusive, and occasionally even daringly grand in scope. Since the birth of this country, we have always found it within ourselves to stand up to the most daunting challenges that life, and the world, have thrown in our path. We have always been up to any task, and in our short history we have moved mountains.

When I take pause to look out across the landscape of these troubled times in which we live, what often runs through my mind is the thought that these days heroes are hard to find. I’m not speaking about a great quarterback who thrills us with his performance on the gridiron, or a hockey player who can dazzle us with a goal scoring slap shot launched like a missile from the blue line. No, I’m thinking more of those very special people who have the capacity to make a positive difference in our world and in our personal lives.

Heroes are those rare individuals who act in ways that garner our collective admiration through the way in which they bring goodness and a sense of positivity to our world. They are those special people of strength and compassion who reach out to help others, sometimes putting their own safety at risk. In my mind, Dr. Anthony Fauci is indeed that rare and special person who is a true hero. Perhaps more than any person in America, he has brought light into the long, dark, and frightening nights of the global pandemic.

He was thrown into the national media spotlight at the start of the pandemic in March of 2020. He is an 80 year old man who was born in Brooklyn, New York on Christmas Eve in 1940; the son of an Italian immigrant pharmacist. A boy who was delivering prescriptions on his bicycle, medicine and helping others, seems to run in his veins. Today, he still projects the vitality, mental sharpness and youthful zest of that young boy he was so long ago. Facing the COVID crisis with intelligence, honesty and clinical credibility, Dr. Anthony Fauci has become like America’s grandfatherly four star general of the COVID-19 crisis. Through the darkest days of facing the daunting task of working with a former president who threw him under the bus the moment he publicly disagreed with him, he has always told the American people the truth. He has captured our respect not just by practicing his brand of credibility and expertise, but also through his calm and affable bedside manner. His style and persona have made him a reassuring presence in a time of grave uncertainty. Time magazine named him a 2020 guardian of the year, and although he never sought it out, he has become America’s medical rock star. His face can be found on the protective masks that people wear, in a variety of products on Amazon that bear his image, and even in bobble head dolls on the dashboards of our cars.

As I say, Dr. Fauci has become a bit like the Mick Jagger of the medical world, and like Mick, there have been those times along the way when, try as he may, he just “can’t get no satisfaction.” A sad and disturbing reality that has walked hand in hand with his success is the fact that for all of those who see him as a hero, there are those Americans who vehemently disagree with him. In 2020, the deep-seated and baseless mistrust of Dr. Fauci that some harbored resulted in threats against him and his family. This situation necessitated the need for him to be surrounded by federal bodyguards on a 24/7 basis. In the face of this, he has never been deterred from his mission. He has pressed ahead and maintained his efforts throughout the deadly reign of the COVID pandemic.

He currently serves as President Biden’s chief medical advisor for the COVID-19 pandemic. He has served US presidents from both parties for over four decades. If that weren’t enough, he is taking this on while keeping his day job as the director of the National Institute of Health’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.

So who is this man who has emerged as a hero, as well as a villain, to so many of us? Well, he’s definitely no Tony-come-lately to be sure. In 1966 he graduated first in his class from Cornell medical school. After completing his medical residency, in 1968 he joined the NIH with a specialty in undertaking leading-edge research on the immune system and related rare diseases. In 1981 his ground-breaking work on Aids, exhaustive research that he did not delegate to those who worked for him, but took on himself, earned him praise on a global scale. It made him an AIDS celebrity in the medical science community. His work resulted in his appointment as director of the NIH’s Allergy and Infectious Disease division. He still holds that position today. Across a broad span of years, his leadership has expanded as a result of responding to a series of life-threatening infectious diseases that included SARS, Ebola, and Zika.

When all is said and done, with his fact-based no-nonsense approach, and his reassuring likability, he has become the face of the battle against COVID-19 in America. Again, heroes are hard to find in this world, however, they do seem to come along in those times when we need them. I believe that we have a hero in Anthony Fauci.

In all candor, during the term of the former president I confess that there were many times when bits and pieces from the timeless 1910 poem, “If” that Rudyard Kipling crafted for his son who was going off to serve in the military have meandered the corridors of my mind as I watched Dr. Fauci weather, with grace and dignity, very public and withering assaults on his character from the highest level.

In my mind, many of the words from that poem seem to capture what Dr. Fauci has dealt with in his efforts to serve the greater good.

“If you can keep your head when all about you are

losing theirs and blaming it on you;

If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you, but

make allowance for their doubting too:

If you can wait and not be tired of waiting, or being

lied about, don’t deal in lies, or being hated don’t

give way to hating.

If you meet with triumph and disaster and treat those two

Imposters just the same, yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,

And… which is more…you’ll be a man my son.”

Paul Collins is a freelance writer from Southborough, Massachusetts.