Most Inspiring Winners of the Past

2001 - The Passengers and Crew of Flight 93

On Sept. 11, 2001, in the face of shock, devastation, and loss, Beliefnet members shared minute-by-minute prayers on the site and poured out expressions of love, unity, and hope that we would not be engulfed by violence and fear. There were many unbelievably heroic acts stemming from 9/11, but our editors and community chose to honor the passengers and crew of United Airlines Flight 93. That flight had been hijacked by terrorists, who murdered the pilots. Their plan was to fly the plane into the White House. Passengers who were on their cell phones learned what had happened to the Twin Towers and took action. In their last 32 minutes of life, they pulled together to overwhelm the hijackers and crash the plane into a field in Pennsylvania. All were killed. As the Beliefnet profile noted, "Terrorism has people willing to die to slaughter others; freedom has people willing to die to save others."

2002 - Asma Hakimi

Asma Hakimi, the heroic principal of a secret girls' school in Afghanistan, inspired people of all faiths on our site. Hakimi ran the school in Kabul during the reign of the Taliban. Every day she put her life in jeopardy with no expectation of fame or fortune--she just believed deeply that depriving girls of education meant consigning them to lives of misery and poverty. After soldiers raided her school, beating students and arresting teachers, she restarted the school in another location the next month. Sadly, the persecution of women continues in Afghanistan, so the work of Asma Hakimi and others like her remains dangerous and important. She serves as a beacon of hope to all those who fight against religious repression around the world.

2003 - Archbishop Sean O'Malley

During 2002 and 2003 the horrific scandal involving sexual abuse of children by Catholic priests was exposed. One prime focus was the diocese of Boston, where church authorities had not only covered up child abuse, but treated victims with hostility and made safeguarding the church's treasury their priority. In 2003 Archbishop Sean O’Malley arrived in Boston to try to heal the spiritual and moral wounds. O'Malley, a Franciscan friar, took a very different approach. "People's lives are more important than money," he said. He met with groups of victims and quickly moved toward financial settlement. He openly confessed the church's sins: "The whole Catholic community is ashamed and anguished because of the pain and damage inflicted on so many young people and our inability and unwillingness to deal with the crime of sexual abuse of minors. To those victims and their families we beg forgiveness."

2004 - Pat Tillman

Pat Tillman, the professional football player who after 9/11 left a multimillion-dollar NFL career to volunteer for military service in Afghanistan, was tragically killed in 2004. Beliefnet selected Tillman not only for his bravery but for sacrificing fame, money, and glory to pursue his ideals. At the time it was believed that Tillman, an Army Ranger, had died in battle, for which he received the Silver Star. The following year, however, it was revealed that Tillman had actually been killed by his fellow Rangers in a horrendous friendly-fire accident. Army officials knew but did not inform Tillman's family or the public until weeks after a nationally televised memorial. Tillman's family, furious and disillusioned, has charged the Army with criminal negligence and a cover-up.

2005 - Victoria Ruvolo

Victoria Ruvolo was an "ordinary" person who did something extraordinary. Driving home from work a month before Thanksgiving, she encountered a car full of joy-riding teenagers who thought it would be fun to toss a frozen turkey into traffic. The turkey smashed through Ruvolo's windshield, shattering her face and nearly killing her. She spent a month in a coma, underwent surgery to rebuild her face, and remained on a breathing tube for some time after. Rather than reacting with rage, Ruvolo instead showed mercy to the teenager who had thrown the turkey and asked the judge for leniency, saying, "There is no room for vengeance in my life." The teen was sentenced to six months in jail rather than the 25 years he might have received. At the sentencing Ruvolo challenged him "to learn from this awful experience and seek an honorable life."

2006 - The Amish of Nickel Mines, Pa.

The Amish are known for their pacifist religion and for keeping separate from the modern world. So it was particularly shocking when 21st century violence shattered a small Amish community in rural Lancaster County, Pa. A local man invaded a one-room schoolhouse, shooting 10 young girls, leaving five of them dead, and then killing himself. During the ordeal, one of the girls offered to be killed first in hopes that the others would be spared. Within hours of the shooting, the families of the children not only expressed their forgiveness for the killer but reached out to his family. A Beliefnet member wrote: "The message of forgiveness, rather than vengeance, goes to the heart of how we should behave toward each other."

2008 - Randy Pausch

Randy Pausch, a computer science professor at Carnegie Mellon University, knew he was dying when he took the stage before 400 students and fellow faculty to deliver "The Last Lecture." At 46 with a wife and three young children, Pausch was suffering from terminal pancreatic cancer. "I'm dying and I'm having fun," he said in his lecture, distilling what he learned in fulfilling so many of his childhood dreams. "And I'm going to keep having fun every day, because there's no other way to play it." Before he died in July, 2008, the video of "The Last Lecture" went viral on the internet, reaching millions of people worldwide and inspiring many of them to change their lives. A book based on "The Last Lecture" became a best-seller. At a time when many people would have retreated into self-pity and isolation, Pausch reached out with the best part of himself to help others live as fully as he had.