Rick Morain is the former publisher and owner of the Jefferson Herald, for which he writes a regular column. This essay first appeared on Substack, in two parts.

The American writer James Agee, together with photographer Walker Evans, in 1941 released Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, a book documenting the lives of impoverished Southern sharecroppers during the Depression.

The title is an apt referent for the subjects of this column: men and women whom I admire for what they have done for other human beings, this year and/or in past years. They aren’t all necessarily famous, but they deserve to be. Others certainly earn my admiration as well, but putting together my year-end list, it’s hard for me not include ten of them up front.

The envelopes please, in no particular order:

Liz Cheney

As U.S. Representative from Wyoming from 2017 to 2023, Cheney had earned a top position in the Republican congressional leadership coterie as a longtime GOP stalwart. But she couldn’t abide President Donald Trump after his role in the mob attack on the Capitol in January 2021. She voted against Trump’s first impeachment in 2019, but voted for and worked for his second impeachment in 2021.

In a House floor speech shortly before the second impeachment, Cheney declared, “The President of the United States summoned this mob, assembled the mob, and lit the flame of this attack. . . . There has never been a greater betrayal by a President of the United States of his office and of his oath to the Constitution of the United States.”

Cheney served as vice chair of the House select committee that investigated the January 6 Capitol attack. For her ongoing strong, vocal opposition to Trump, she lost her position as House Republican Conference chair, was expelled from the Wyoming Republican Party, was censured by the Republican National Committee, and decisively lost the 2022 Republican primary election for her Wyoming congressional seat.

Cheney has continued her consistent, determined opposition to Trump. She supported Kamala Harris for president in 2024. President Joe Biden awarded her the Presidential Citizens Medal in January 2025, and she has received other awards. She was nominated for the 2025 Nobel Peace Prize. Her towering political courage is awe-inspiring.

Art Cullen

Art’s piquant commentaries in the Storm Lake Times Pilot and on his Substack column (Art Cullen’s Notebook) draw readers like moths to flame. Writing from the center of Iowa’s reddest congressional district, he fearlessly takes on the political and economic forces that threaten the economic and political health of rural Iowa.

His bittersweet rural life comparisons of the past and the present are both convincing and frustrating. His bedrock question seems to be whether we can regain in today’s world what we once had. In a style reminiscent of H. L. Mencken, and looking startlingly like Mark Twain, Art’s journalistic mastery is enviable and undeniable.

The Cullen family manages to turn out virtuoso newspaper copy despite the economic struggles that face all small-town publications. For quite a while Art and his publisher brother John fed their operation with their own personal income.

Any email entitled “Art Cullen” gets my immediate attention, as it does that of many thousands of Cullen fans.

José Andrés

Founder of World Central Kitchen in 2010 following the great Haiti earthquake, Andres takes his non-profit organization to natural or man-made disaster locations around the world to provide vital meals for many thousands of survivors. An award-winning master chef for his many top-grade restaurants, Andrés came to the U.S. in 1990 from Spain but is more like a citizen of the world. World Central Kitchen raises hundreds of millions of dollars every year for its lifesaving food prep work.

In the U.S. the organization feeds survivors and emergency personnel in hurricanes, forest fires, floods, and similar disasters. It also served meals in several locations during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Abroad, the organization has provided assistance in many locations: Australia, the Bahamas, the Dominican Republic, Egypt, Israel, Lebanon, Puerto Rico, Ukraine, Turkey, Syria, and Palestine. The group also operates culinary training programs in a number of countries.

Twenty-eight World Central Kitchen workers and volunteers have lost their lives while giving aid in the past three years in Ukraine and Gaza.

The list of awards, prizes, and honorary degrees Andrés has received is prestigious and very long.

Audi Crooks

After setting record after state record as a basketball phenom at Bishop Garrigan High School in Algona, where she also won four state titles in shot put and discus and played trumpet and drums, Crooks chose Iowa State as her college basketball destination. A junior there now, her record-setting performances continue, as well as her national hoops recognition.

Former All-American basketball standout Rebecca Lobo, now a national TV hoops announcer and commentator, said of Crooks during her freshman season, “You’re kind of fascinated because . . . you don’t almost ever see a player with her frame who can move like she can move who has the feet and hands she has. She’s kind of effective using her size and embracing her size and physicality that she has.”

Crooks’ basketball prowess alone would command admiration. But wait, there’s more.

The ISU junior has created the Audi Crooks Foundation, whose goal the organization’s website describes as seeking “to uplift underserved children and communities by removing barriers to opportunity in three areas that shaped Audi’s own journey: education, athletics, and music.”

The website lists examples: helping budding musicians with instrument purchases or rentals, youth sports registrations for aspiring athletes, providing items like shoes, coats, and school supplies, providing fees for empty hot lunch accounts, and helping with costs for items like school trips, uniforms, and medical needs like glasses.

And she’s still a college junior.

Volodymyr Zelenskyy

After a career as a comedian and entertainment producer, Zelenskyy entered politics and was elected Ukrainian President in 2019 in the biggest landslide in that nation’s history with nearly 75 percent of the vote.

Russia had captured the Crimean peninsula of Ukraine in 2014, and Zelenskyy has resisted all calls and pressures to acknowledge legitimacy of that annexation. Russia launched its full-scale Ukrainian invasion in February 2022, expecting to defeat any resistance in a short time.

But Zelenskyy rallied his nation, masterfully attracted international assistance, and today, after nearly four years, Russia’s vaunted military controls only about 20 percent of Ukraine.

Zelenskyy’s forces, inspired by the steady leadership which has gained his nation billions of dollars of military and economic aid from the U.S. and Europe, have earned the admiration and support of most of the Western world.

When Trump was elected president of the U.S. again in 2024, American support became considerably less dependable as Trump has sought a “peace” that appears to include Ukrainian acquiescence in Russian occupation of much of the eastern portion of the country. Zelenskyy has skillfully maneuvered his nation through a thicket of international diplomatic intrigue to attract billions of dollars’ worth of European aid to help him resist Russia’s aggression despite Trump’s cool attitude.

Ukraine’s future remains in doubt, but it’s unlikely that any Ukrainian leader other than Zelenskyy could have brought his country through the fire to the stout position it holds today.

Anthony Fauci

Dr. Anthony Fauci, who recently turned 85, was director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases for nearly 40 years up until 2022, guiding the nation’s response to both the HIV/AIDS epidemic and the COVID-19 epidemic, as well as to SARS, swine flu, MERS, and Ebola.

During both the AIDS and the COVID crises he was guided by the latest research, changing his recommendations as new data emerged. His willingness to alter his positions brought him criticism for “indecisiveness,” and he and his family lived with threats of personal harm, including death, after President Trump loosed a steady stream of opposition to his infectious disease leadership.

Dr. Fauci has also contributed immensely important immunological research and development for treatment of cancers and several other sometimes fatal diseases. For his leadership in the development of the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) in the early 2000s, President George W. Bush in 2008 awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor. PEPFAR saved more than 20 million lives in the developing world.

Dr. Fauci served the nation’s public health for more than 50 years and has advised every president since Ronald Reagan. He’s received honorary degrees from many colleges and universities, and holds medals and other awards from nations around the world.

Pope Leo XIV

On a fourth ballot, in May 2025, the College of Cardinals elected a dark horse candidate, born Robert Francis Prevost in Chicago, to lead the world’s more than 1.4 billion Roman Catholics. The election initially raised suspicions among many of the faithful: they feared that a pope from a world power would merely parrot his government’s orientation.

They couldn’t have been more wrong. The new 70-year-old pope, whom former Pope Francis reportedly groomed quietly as his successor, was soon employing “soft power” as a spokesman for migrants, workers, climate change mitigation, and human rights.

Pope Leo has not initiated changes to traditional Catholic doctrine on issues like abortion, the death penalty, same-sex marriage, sexual alignment, euthanasia, or women as priests. He’s a gradualist, not a revolutionary. As an Augustinian, he places a high premium on obedience to spiritual teachings and teachers. Indeed, progressive Catholics may chafe at his reluctance to push for major doctrinal reorientations.

On the other hand, he emphasizes the openness of the church to those of all sexual orientations. He thinks that women as deacons is a subject worthy of policy consideration. And maybe most significant, he maintains that the right to religious freedom is “a cornerstone of any just society, for it safeguards the moral space in which conscience may be formed and exercised.”

As for modern world challenges, Pope Leo XIV speaks out strongly against aggressive wars, inhuman treatment of migrants, blind nationalism, and class and race barriers. He places a high premium on dialogue, cooperation, and mutual understanding. No wonder President Trump and his advisers regard with alarm his popularity and his outspoken solidarity with the oppressed.

Warren Buffett and Bill Gates

No billionaires rank higher on the visibility charts than Bill Gates and Warren Buffett. And none are more deserving of gratitude for what they do with their money.

Buffett is classified as the world’s 9th or 10th richest person, Gates the 12th to 16th. Those statistics make little difference to either man. Each would have ranked much higher and for much longer had he not been investing billions in worthwhile causes around the world.

I praised both men in a column several months ago and have no qualms about repeating myself here.

Nicknamed the “Oracle of Omaha” for his investing acuity through his Berkshire Hathaway company, Buffett has pledged to give away over 99 percent of his fortune through philanthropy. Most of that funnels through the Gates Foundation, with which Bill Gates (earlier in conjunction with his then-wife Melinda French Gates) provides massive funding worldwide, to promote health and education and to alleviate poverty.

Like Buffett, Gates has pledged to give away over 99 percent of his wealth. In 2010 Bill Gates and Buffett founded the Giving Pledge, through which other extremely wealthy individuals promise to give away at least half their fortunes to worthy causes, either during their lifetimes or in their wills. To date, more than 250 donors from 30 countries have signed on, devoting many, many billions of dollars to help disadvantaged people around the world.

The United States government appropriates an average of about $70 billion a year for foreign aid, including military assistance. The Giving Pledge original potential totals about $600 billion. That’s an overall figure, not annualized. But it’s a mighty big chunk of change, even in comparison with U.S. yearly foreign assistance.

Gates and Buffett are the financial equivalent of George Washington, who as head of the U.S. military after winning the American Revolution, resigned his army position and returned to Mount Vernon as a private citizen. He later accepted the U.S. presidency, but as an elected leader, not as a military despot.

Washington placed others first, as Buffett and Gates do today.

Unnamed federal officials

I don’t know their names, or the positions they hold, or their genders, or how many of them there are, or anything else about them. Except that they deserve our thanks.

They are the government employees who stay on to try to protect the American people from the worst consequences of the Trump administration, rather than resigning in protest or fear. They had their counterparts in the first Trump administration. Through delays, tweaks, and outright shelving of dangerous, brutalizing, and whimsical government proposals, they protect the weakest and neediest among us from sinking further into poverty, illness, and other dire difficulties.

They also hope to forestall results of foreign adventurist initiatives from the administration’s most aggressive advisers.

And they provide crucial public leaks to the media as a part of their efforts.

We’ll never know how much damage they prevent. But I’m very glad they’re on the job, and that they’re able to operate under the administration’s radar.

Sid Jones

For more than 40 years, Sid provided wise, compassionate leadership to the economic progress of the Greene County community and hundreds of its citizens individually. As president of Greene County Development Corporation for several terms, his vision steered the organization’s efforts in economic and community development, benefiting west central Iowa in both the short and long terms.

Sid helmed Home State Bank’s efforts for the community through both its financial and leadership contributions. His wisdom guided a great many of us, and he devoted many of his waking hours to personal efforts “on the ground” in development projects, as well as in policy creation.

I’m personally indebted to him for his ready ear and his thoughtful analysis during our discussions of the paths toward a vibrant future for Jefferson and Greene County. His death this year deprived us of his friendship and leadership and the warmth of his personality, but the community will benefit from his gifts for years to come.