"Fly, yes. Land, no." or " Live Long and Prosper"

Leonard Nimoy, who famously played Spock in the original Star Trek, passed away last week at 83, then only a few days afterwards we almost lost Harrison Ford in a plane crash.

I am at the age now when the heroes we grew up with start to leave us. We look around at the celebrities today and often wonder what there is to celebrate.

Why should we be impressed with them when they get into drunken trouble on camera or strut around half naked on television? For the most part we are right not to.

To be honest, there just aren’t very many role-models to look up to these days. But from these two men, there might just be a lesson or two to learn. They are two of the last actors of a generation, a generation when leading men were actually real men, real people with real convictions who lived real lives despite their jobs being to play larger-than-life heroes on the silver screen.

They tackle life and in Nimoy’s case, death with a passion that I’ve only rarely seen in anyone regardless of whether or not they worked on a ranch or a movie set.

So, why am I doing an obituary-and-a-half for two golden -gilded actors who live in an alien world so far, far, away?

Because we all have heroes. If you’re lucky enough to know one in person then make sure you celebrate them before they have gone into the sunset for the last time.

Everyone has their film heroes. For my mom’s generation it was Clark Gable, Cary Grant or Sean Connery. For some, it might be John Wayne or Clint Eastwood.

I grew up with Harrison Ford as my template for what an “all-American guy” was supposed to be. I was the perfect age when Han Solo and Indiana Jones first hit the big screen. To a 10-year -old, you couldn’t ask for a better role model than the guy who scrapped with Nazi’s, found buried treasure in the dirt, took the first shot at alien gangsters and got the space princess at the end of the film.

When I turned on the news Friday to hear that Ford had crashed a World War II (WWII) plane on the 18th hole of a golf course in California, I gasped, laughed and nearly cried all at the same time.

“No,” I shouted to the sky, “This is too soon after Spock! Too soon!” I had to laugh though, because if old man Ford was going to go out, then no screenwriter or director could have done it better.

Unlike many actors, Ford is a man’s man. One could even call him a real-life hero. Certainly the Boy Scout here in Wyoming that he rescued in 2001 and the several others he has rescued while working with various volunteer search and rescue operations over the years wouldn’t hesitate to call him one. When he’s not working in Hollywood, the 72-year- old actor spends his time on his land near Jackson Hole or living out real-life action scenes by spoiling tee times in California with WWII planes.

Ford’s son Ben let fans know the old man was going to pull through late Friday afternoon. “Dad is ok. Battered, but ok! He is every bit the man you would think he is,” Ben Ford tweeted.

Thanks kid, but we already knew that one. As Han Solo tells Luke Skywalker in Star Wars, “Don’t get cocky!”

Nimoy’s character Spock was a purely logical half-alien from the original Star Trek. Spock was cool and calculating where Captain Kirk, played by William Shatner would charge into trouble headfirst. Over the years on the television show and then later in the movies, Spock learned to embrace his human side more and more and to see emotion as powerful instead of something to be avoided.

In his real life Nimoy was quite the opposite. He was just as famous for his work with several charities and causes that he lent his pop culture status to. All over the world, fans of Star Trek, science and humanity mourned his passing with citizens of Canada going so far as to taking to “Spocking” their currency by drawing pointy ears and brow to make the face on their bills look like Nimoy’s signature character.

The actor Zachary Quinto, who plays Spock in the new Star Trek “reboot” movies, was mentored by the late actor on how to play the iconic character of Spock. Quinto posted on his social media page, “My heart is broken. I love you profoundly my dear friend. And I will miss you every day”.

Nimoy’s last post on his twitter page to his over one million followers just a week before his passing perfectly summed up the way he lived.”

A life is like a garden. Perfect moments can be had, but not preserved, except in memory,” said Nimoy in his Tweet. He signed it as he always did with Spock’s most famous quote: LLAP (Live Long and Prosper).