20th Century's greatest figure is still up for debate, vote

The Boston Herald

September 22, 1992

Beverly Beckham

It began with a sign - not a spiritual one, but a billboard. At least that's how I think it began. The billboard was at Disney World, and it asked visitors to consider who they believe had made the greatest contribution to the 20th Century.

Maybe the wording was different. Maybe it was vote for the man of the century. I don't remember. But I found myself mulling over the question, then posing it to everyone I knew.

"Gandhi," was the instant reply from a 27-year-old woman born and raised in Italy. "Imagine this century without him," she said. "He influenced millions of lives. He gave hope to so many people."

Pope John XXIII, a pair of nuns said, because he changed the church for the first time in hundreds of years. Without him, the Mass would still be in Latin, sisters would still be in habits, and the church would be an anachronism.

President Kennedy, dozens insisted.

Winston Churchill.

Martin Luther King.

Franklin Roosevelt.

My husband suggested that it wasn't a person but a thing that had the biggest effect on this century. Mass production of the automobile transformed the world. It brought mobility and freedom never imagined. It led to the paving of woods, the building of bridges, the making of new laws. Henry Ford was the man most responsible for the growth of the auto industry. So is it he who has most influenced this century?

Maybe. But William Levitt recast the world, too. He invented the suburbs. He bought a potato field on Long Island in 1949 and used mass production techniques to construct street after street of private homes. Levittown altered the American landscape forever.

"It seems to me that we should leave some mark upon the world and not just live and pass away," Eleanor Roosevelt said. Everyone leaves a mark. But whose is most enduring? Whose has touched the most people?

Adolf Hitler stands out like Mount Everest on a topographical map. He did the most damage in the 20th Century.

But who did the most good?

Alexander Fleming, who had been a medical officer in England during World War I? He watched men die of infection from their wounds. His discovery of penicillin, the first wonder drug, saved millions of lives?

Jonas Salk who killed polio? Charles Richard Drew whose research made blood banks possible?

What about Albert Schweitzer, the theologian and musician who dedicated his life to the poor and the sick in Africa. Or Rosa Parks whose refusal to give up her seat on a Montgomery, Ala., bus to a white passenger helped end segregation.

"I did not decide that Dec. 1st was to be any different than any other day," she said. "History made that decision for me."

Is it just history that makes people lead? Is it happenstance? Or is greatness inherent, not imposed?

"It's really a wonder that I haven't dropped all my ideals, because they seem so absurd and impossible to carry out. Yet I keep them because in spite of everything I still believe that people are really good at heart," wrote Ann Frank. She influenced history.

"I do nothing. He does it all," says Mother Teresa. She makes history.

"It's kind of fun to do the impossible," Walt Disney confessed. He imagined history.

Then there's Stravinsky, the musical genius, and Jeanette Rankin, the first woman to be elected as a representative in Congress, and E.B. White, the essayist and Richard Wright, the novelist, and Louis Armstrong and Norman Rockwell all of whom augmented, beautified, enhanced the world in some way.

Hemingway's terse writing influenced millions.

Jackson Pollock's abstract expressionism expanded art.

This century has been shaped by genius, by valor, by determination, by the guts, the prayers, the dreams, the sweat and the goodness of thousands.

What public figure do you think has made the greatest impact on the 20th Century? Who have I left out? Write and tell me who you would choose and why.