Michael Oher

(www.nytimes.com)

What is a hero to you? Well to me a hero is someone who you look up to. It is also a person who you think of as a role model. This is a hero to me.

My hero is Michael Oher. He was born in Memphis, Tennessee on May 28, 1986. In Michael’s early life his first mother was a drug addict. His family was poor and he was walking the streets. He was homeless. He had many siblings but none are mentioned in my research. Michael had to repeat first and second grade when he went to school. Around the age of ten he did not go to school at all. In his first grade year he missed 46 days of school. His IQ was 80 and he was in the lower 10% at Briarcrest Christian School. In nine years of going to school, he was moved to eleven different schools. One day Michael was walking on a street to go to a school gym to stay warm, when the Tuohy family stopped in the car and asked him where he was going. He told them he was going to the gym because he had nowhere else to stay. They put him in their car and brought him home. They soon adopted him and brought him into their family.

(www.nytimes.com)

I think he became interested in football because of his size as he was very big. All the kids and coaches wanted him to try it because of his size. In order to play, his coaches told him he must raise his grades first because they weren’t very good at all. His father went to jail and was murdered when he was a senior in high school. To graduate high school, he had to work very hard. His adopted family hired a tutor to work with him at home. He did it! He raised his grades so much that he graduated high school and went on to Ole Miss College. He got more scholarship offers than he could imagine, but he decided on Ole Miss. Michael plays for the Baltimore Ravens in the NFL. His story was also made into a book and a movie called The Blind Side.

Michael Oher has inspired me because he went from a very scary childhood to graduate high school, college and go on to play in the NFL. He has also been very humble about it all. He had always struggled academically going into tenth grade and started fresh from there. He has taught me to believe that anything is possible, to set goals and work hard to achieve them. He has taught me to be thankful for everything I have because some people don’t have nearly as much. His story is a great example of the saying, “Don’t judge a book by its cover” because even though he was really big and looked scary, his classmates called him a big teddy bear as he was not mean. I also learned to be a friend to everyone because they can turn out to be a great person like Michael Oher.

Michael Oher is my hero. He had a rough life and was given a chance by the Tuohy family. They are heroes, too. Michael worked hard to be successful in school and in sports. He was very humble and didn’t brag. This is what a hero is to me.