There is something very special about a quiet hero. Atticus Finch of To Kill a Mockingbird—perhaps the most beloved character in American literature and film. George Bailey in It’s a Wonderful Life. Sports has given us Lou Gehrig, the pride of the Yankees, and James J. Braddock, better known as Cinderella Man.  In the world of tantrums and steroid use, we have Mariano Rivera’s quiet calm and humility and Mike Lowell’s steadfast ability to come through when his team needs him. (Yes, he plays for the other guys. He’s still great.) In real life, we have Captain Sully, whose skill and calm saved hundreds, perhaps thousands, of lives. Wartime brings us the fathers and mothers who have to leave their families, and their spouses who hold things together while they’re gone.

Today, if you’ll indulge me, I’d like to tell you about another quiet hero.

My grandfather was born in 1918 in Terre Haute, Indiana. His house didn’t have running water, and his parents didn’t speak English, having emigrated from Hungary a few years before. Poppy translated for them, did the errands that required English. He was an altar boy, studied hard, helped his mom, swam in the Mississippi River with his two brothers. They had no money, but they had each other, their church, a solid work ethic.

When my grandfather was 14, his family moved to Connecticut to a neighborhood full of Hungarian immigrants, including a family of four girls just down the street. Pop took a shine to Helen, asked her to walk him to the train station the day he left for college and kissed her goodbye. She was thirteen years old. They wrote throughout the next four years—Pop never had another girlfriend—and got married the year after he graduated from Notre Dame. He went on to get his master’s in English from Yale, but when his mom needed help at the humble grocery store they owned, he left teaching. He played the stock market, loved sports of all kinds, adored my grandmother, loved children. He had nine children, twenty-eight grandchildren and a couple dozen more great-grandchildren. Whenever a new baby was brought to him for inspection, his eyes would grow wet, and he’d say, very softly, “Well now. Look at that.”

My grandfather was a great man but lived a quiet life. His heroism came not from acts of courage in times of war, but in the everyday kindness he showed to every single person he met. He offered credit at the grocery store knowing full well a lot of those bills would never be paid. Mothers unpacking at home often found extra food in their brown paper bags…an extra half-pound of ground beef or a gallon of ice cream they didn’t order, and when they called the store to let Poppy know, he’d say he must’ve made a mistake, no need to pay the difference. When little kids came into the store to buy candy, their pennies went a lot further than at other stores, and Pop’s attitude on shoplifters was, “He really must’ve needed that.”

He never said an unkind word about anyone, never participated in petty gossip, never complained, never wanted more than he had—a loving wife, healthy children, a roof above his head.

Poppy wasn’t demonstrative; he rarely hugged me, would duck if anyone tried to kiss him. When my own father died, Poppy stepped up; a hand on my shoulder once in a while, or a few words of rare praise, “Your dad would be proud.” He kept my books on his nighttable, though I’m pretty sure he never read them. But he looked at the covers all the time, and he always seemed to get such a kick out of seeing my name there in big print.

Only once did he tell me he loved me—just after I gave my grandmother’s eulogy. But in the last days of his life, when speech had left him and he no longer opened his eyes, he held my hand and kissed it repeatedly, and when he finally slipped away this past May, my hand was on his chest, right over his heart.

He was the best man I’ve ever known, probably the best I’ll ever know, and I will always be grateful that my life was blessed with such a gentle, good man as my grandfather.

Who are the quiet heroes you remember in film or in books? Do you have a quiet hero in your life? What has he done that makes him so memorable?