The admirables from 2025

Five of the columnist's favorite people, and why. Five more next week - - -

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 10 of them up front.

To do descriptive justice to the nominees, I’ll discuss five of them this week, and the other five next week.

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 Republican 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. 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 website 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.

JOSE ANDRES

Founder of World Central Kitchen in 2010 following the great Haiti earthquake, Andres takes his non-profit organization to natural or manmade 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 United States 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 WCK assistance location list is long: 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 Andres’ awards, prizes, and honorary degrees 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 ZELENSKY

After a career as a comedian and entertainment producer, Zelensky 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 Zelensky 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 Zelensky rallied his nation, masterfully attracted international assistance, and today, after nearly four years, Russia’s vaunted military controls only about 20 percent of Ukraine.

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

When Trump was elected U.S. President 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. Zelensky 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 Zelensky could have brought his country through the fire to the stout position it holds today.

More to come next week - - -