Heroism is an obedience to a secret impulse of an individual’s character.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Discovering Nathan Hale
He’s the face of heroism, yet no one knows what he really looked like. His home is a shrine, but he never lived there. Most every school child knows his inspiring last words, though it’s not clear he uttered them. Nevertheless, Nathan Hale is designated by statute as Connecticut’s official hero, an honor that no other state appears to have bestowed on a native son.
Hale died at age 21. Probably no one so young has had so many monuments dedicated to them. There are statues in in New York, Washington, D.C., Chicago, St. Paul and elsewhere. College buildings bear his name as do public schools from New Jersey to Washington State, Ohio to Oklahoma. But nowhere is he so well memorialized as in Connecticut where a trip along the “Hale Trail” exposes travelers to natural beauty, history, architecture, sculpture, and an invitation to encounter a legend.
