Not often is a hero so apparent.

When people do heroic things, they’re cheered and celebrated, congratulated and patted on the back. But their heroism usually fades. It drifts into the forgotten sea of new good deeds.

Sometimes, though, those in the present with vision enough to see the past reach back into history’s mist and pull out the forgotten heroes of yesterday.

Jack Trice was a forgotten hero. Buried under mountains of Cyclone history in State Gym, Trice’s story was dormant for decades before resurging in the 1970s.

And what a story it is. It’s a story of hope, a story of courage, a story of pride. It’s the story of Jack Trice — Iowa State’s first black athlete and the only Cyclone ever killed because of injuries sustained during competition — that compelled an ISU committee Sunday to recommend that we name our football stadium after Trice.

The ball is now in the hands of ISU President Martin Jischke. Jischke could support the recommendation and pass it along to the regents, likely meaning Cyclone Stadium would indeed be renamed in Trice’s honor. Or Jischke could make no recommendation to the regents, likely meaning the stadium name would remain.

The abbreviated Trice story goes something like this: Trice, an interior lineman, executed a “roll block” — an extremely dangerous move designed to knock down would-be blockers for the ball carrier — against Minnesota in Minneapolis on Oct. 6, 1923. Already playing with a broken collar bone, Trice was hurt badly. He was toppled over and stomped on — probably because he was a black man playing a white man’s game at a time when hatred ran wild.

He was taken to the hospital and turned away, forced to ride back to Ames on a straw mattress. Two days later, Trice was dead. Hemorrhaged lungs and internal bleeding proved too much for a man who worked odd jobs by night to support his wife and mother while going to school and playing collegiate football.

A letter that Trice wrote to himself the night before the Minnesota game was found in his pocket the day of his funeral. It read: “My thoughts just before the first real college game of my life: The honor of my race, family and self is at stake. Everyone is expecting me to do big things. I will. My whole body and soul are to be thrown recklessly about the field. Every time the ball is snapped, I will be trying to do more than my part. Fight low, with your eyes open and toward the play. Watch out for crossbucks and reverse end runs. Be on your toes every minute if you expect to make good. Jack.”

It’s rare to have such a ready-made hero as Jack Trice.

Still, there are those who apparently just don’t get it. I got an unsigned e-mail over the weekend from an alumnus of the 1980s, when the push for a “Jack Trice Stadium” began.

“. . . do not be compelled to push for his name simply because of ‘white man guilt’ against blacks. That was the attitude back then, and my sense is, that is what it is now,” the letter read in part.

Is that it? Do we simply feel sorry for Trice because he was black?

I don’t.

Black or white, rich or poor, man or woman, Trice was a worthy hero for the ages.

That’s my take, anyway.

The e-mail author had another.

“One could consider other great football greats who brought pride to ISU football, beginning with Troy Davis, the bowl teams of the ’70s, etc. They were all Cyclones; many of them sacrificed their time and sweat for the greatness of Iowa State. Where is their recognition?” the author continued.

To that, I simply ask this: Where are their graves?

Troy Davis was the most talented football player ever to wear a Cyclone uniform. The “bowl teams of the ’70s” were great, too. And indeed they did much to advance Iowa State football.

But Trice went a step further, a step further than anyone could realistically expect.

He gave his life.

Read between the lines. Seeing he couldn’t get to the ball carrier, a man with a sagging shoulder from a broken bone had to make a split-second decision: To live knowing he hadn’t given all he could, or to die knowing that in the end adversity hadn’t gotten the best of him.

It wasn’t glory, remember, that Trice was after.

It was honor. It was honor for his race, for his family — and for himself.

In death, Jack Trice took care of the first two.

In life, the third is up to us.

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Chris Miller is a senior in journalism and mass communication from Marshalltown. He is editor in chief of the Daily.