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Poster Commentary
"The heroic hours of life do not announce their presence by drum and trumpet."Benjamin Cardozo
Poster design:Milton Glaser
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by Erica Brown

A hero is a firefighter who goes into burning buildings on the afternoon of 9/11. A hero is a pilot who lands a plane full of people safely on the Hudson River. Both of these men would tell you that they were just doing their jobs, but just doing their jobs required a heroic dose of bravery.

The word hero comes from the Greek heros, which means a demigod, a larger-than-life superhero who has extraordinary strength. But Benjamin Cardozo (1870–1938) encourages us to think of the word’s Latin origins: to be a hero is to protect, defend or save others. It may be to perform ordinary acts with extraordinary courage.

Cardozo, who was a Supreme Court justice for six years, turns our attention to the jobs that get no “drum and trumpet,” to the invisible heroes: the woman who cares for an aging parent, the man who retires from a corporate job to work in a homeless shelter. Cardozo’s mother died when he was very young, and his older sister, Nell, raised him. He probably knew a lot about silent heroism firsthand.

Today there is a law school in New York named after Benjamin Cardozo. In history, he has earned his drum and trumpet. But in quieter moments, maybe he will also be remembered for his praise of the quiet hero. As it says in Psalms, “The world is built on kindness.”

Author
Benjamin Cardozo
1870–1938
Lived in New York and Washington, D.C.
U.S. Supreme Court justice

Benjamin Cardozo was born in New York City in 1870 of Sephardic-Jewish stock: his family emigrated from Spain and Portugal to the United States in the mid-18th century. 

After practicing law for over 20 years, Cardozo was elected to the New York State Supreme Court, on which his father had served (but from which he resigned due to mounting evidence of corruption). Soon after, Cardozo was appointed to the New York Court of Appeals, the first Jewish appointee to the state’s highest court. During his tenure on the court he gave a series of lectures at Yale that were later published as The Nature of the Judicial Process, an influential book that analyzes the conscious and unconscious processes by which judges decide their cases.

Early in 1932, when Oliver Wendell Holmes retired from the US Supreme Court at age 90, President Herbert Hoover replaced him with Cardozo. Later that same year, Franklin Delano Roosevelt assumed the presidency and waged war on the Depression through his New Deal, which deeply divided the Supreme Court. For example, in 1936 the Court held unconstitutional the federal government’s attempt to regulate wages and hours in the coal industry (Cardozo was one of three dissenters). The following year the Court reversed itself and permitted federal regulation of the steel industry. Cardozo was in the majority, along with Brandeis (the other Jewish member of the Court), Stone, Roberts and Chief Justice Hughes. In May 1937 Cardozo wrote the majority opinion that upheld the Social Security Act.

In 1938, after only six years on the Court, Cardozo suffered a stroke and died at the age of 68.     

 

Artist
Milton Glaser
New York
Graphic designer
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Milton Glaser is among the most celebrated graphic designers in the United States. He has had the distinction of one-man shows at The Museum of Modern Art and the Centre Pompidou.

As a Fulbright scholar, Glaser studied with the painter Giorgio Morandi in Bologna and is an articulate spokesman for the ethical practice of design.

He cofounded the revolutionary Push Pin Studios in 1954 and, with Clay Felker, New York magazine in 1968. In 1974, he opened Milton Glaser, Inc., where he continues to produce a prolific amount of work in many fields of design.

In 2004, he was selected for the Lifetime Achievement Award of the Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum. In 2009, he became the first graphic designer to receive the National Medal of the Arts.

 

Quote
"The heroic hours of life do not announce their presence by drum and trumpet."Benjamin Cardozo

The tests of character come to us silently, unawares, by slow and inaudible approaches.  We hardly know that they are there, till lo! the hour has struck, and the choice has been made, well or ill, but whether well or ill, a choice. 

The heroic hours of life do not announce their presence by drum and trumpet, challenging us to be true to ourselves by appeals to the martial spirit that keeps the blood at heat...

These are the moments when you will need to remember the game that you are playing.  Then it is that you will be summoned to show the courage of adventurous youth.