Undoubtedly, Dr.

Jose Rizal Mercado y Alonso, or Jose Rizal (1861-1896), is our

nation's greatest hero and martyr. All groups of our people across the length and
breadth of this nation, and even the Filipinos and their friends abroad, rightly
commemorate the day of his birth and the day of his execution. In every home of the
Filipinos, his name is a byword, while his image adorns the widest circulation of postage
stamp & paper money. No other Filipino hero can surpass Rizal in the number of cities,
neighborhoods, and streets named after him; the number of educational institutions,
communities, and trade names bearing his name; the number of citizens, Filipinos and
foreigners, named Rizal or Rizalina because of their parents' respect for the Greater
Malayan & in terms of the number of rules, Executive Orders & Proclamations, &
Bulletins, Memoranda & Circulars of both public and private school.

He is our greatest hero because he played a "admirable part" in the movement

as a prominent figure in the Propaganda Campaign, approximately from 1882 to 1896.
During this time, if we were asked to select a single Filipino writer's work, more than any
writer's writing contributed enormously to the development of Filipino nationality, we'll
have no hesitation in choosing Rizal's Noli Me Tangere. No single individual or group of
individuals was responsible for making the No. 1 Hero, the Greatest Malayan of his
people. Rizal himself, his own people, and the foreigners all contributed together to
make him the greatest hero and martyr of his people. If he did not own himself, no
amount of adulation and canonization by the Filipinos and foreigners would turn Rizal
into a great hero.

National Heroes Committee (1993) 1. Heroes are those who have a national idea
and then strive and fight for the independence of the country. 2. Heroes are those who
define and contribute to the structure or life of freedom and order for a country. 3.
Heroes are those who contribute to the quality of life and destiny of a nation. 4. The
hero is part of an individual's speech. 5. The hero is thinking about the future, especially
of the generations to come. 6. The hero's option includes not only the recounting of an
episode or event in history, but also the whole process that made this individual a hero.

To be considered a hero you don't have to have supernatural talents or super-

powers, you can be an ordinary person with a perfectly normal life and still be
considered a hero. Think of people who deserve to be heroes of the past, of the
present, of life, and of literature. A lot of people have someone to look up to, and they're
not a bad person when you look up to someone else. Heros are kind, caring, and
honest, but heroes are never self-absorbed. Hero is someone people can look up to.
Hero is someone who could be honest with you. A hero is someone who knows how to
be respectful of someone else. When people think of the word hero, most people think
they're brave, strong, they've saved someone, but a hero can actually be an average
everyday person who isn't one of the words listed.I don't mean a place that is so
selective and absent from certain thoughts, emotions, and states that it looks like glossy
ads of air-brushed smiling faces, or of people leaping up into the air joyfully or walking
on sunny beaches forever. I think that a hero is any person who really wants to make a
place within themselves a better place for themselves and others.So what am I going to
mean by the word, better? It might take me time to come to something that feels like just
the right word or phrase. In the meantime, I'm going to say that I mean a place where
you come to experience your wholeness, your full humanity, and a place where, in this
experience, you also experience qualities like peace, acceptance, courage, strength;
you experience something like friendly relationships.