A great man – an example for us all – died last week.  Here's Nick Kristof with a well-deserved tribute (I just donated $100 – which goes a LONG ways in Sudan – at www.SudanSunrise.org):

Sports stars often make headlines with spectacular misconduct, and they don't use their celebrity enough to make the world a better place. But every now and then, along comes a star as gifted ethically as athletically — and I'm thinking now of one of the greatest basketball players ever.

Certainly not one of the best shooters, for he averaged only 2.6 points a game. But Manute Bol, at more than 7 feet 6 inches tall, was a moral giant who was unsurpassed in leveraging his fame on behalf of the neediest people on earth.

Bol died on Saturday from a noxious mix of ailments, exacerbated by his insistence on working in Sudan to build schools and forestall a new civil war. Bol's great dream was to build 41 new schools across Sudan (he admired the first President Bush, hence the No. 41).

It's a lofty dream, particularly because he is no longer around to speak at fund-raisers. It's almost as inconceivable as the dream he had when he was an African cattle-herder aspiring to play in the N.B.A. — and this too can be a slam-dunk, posthumously, if his fans help out.

If each admirer chipped in the cost of a ticket to just one game, if each of his former teams agreed to match donations, if a few current and former N.B.A. stars agreed to stand in for Bol at fund-raisers, why then schools would sprout all across Sudan.

The first of Bol's 41 schools is now approaching completion in his childhood village, said Tom Prichard, executive director of Sudan Sunrise, the charity that Bol used to build his schools. Forty to go.

…Bol will never be able to cut the ribbon at the schools he dreamed of. But we can pick up where he left off. In a world with so much athletic narcissism, let's celebrate a Most Valuable Humanitarian by building schools through his charity, www.SudanSunrise.org.

PS--My father today is in southern Sudan – he's been working on an educational project there for 8 years.

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Most Valuable Helper

By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF

Published: June 23, 2010

www.nytimes.com/2010/06/24/opinion/24kristof.html