Who Inspires You?

I found today's Writer's Almanac most interesting.

Dickinson spent most of her adult life in her corner bedroom, which contained a writing table, a dresser, a Franklin stove, a clock, a ruby decanter, and pictures on the wall of three writers: George Eliot, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, and Thomas Carlyle.

If you were to place on your bedroom or office wall the pictures of three persons, living or dead, who had inspired you, who would they be?

My number one would be Grace Murray Hopper. She is credited with discovering the first computer "bug" and coining the term. I wrote about her in my undergrad studies. It was in my research for that paper that I saw for the first time the statement, "It's always easier to ask forgiveness than it is to get permission."

I guess my second would be Nadia Boulanger, from whom I learned how little I knew about music. When I went to study with her in the summer of 1971, I had been an enormous musical fish in a very small pond all my life. I had never met anyone else who had perfect pitch. Suddenly I was surrounded by people with perfect pitch. My specialness was gone. My whole life changed as a result of studying with her. And I can't say it changed for the better or for the worse; it just changed for the different. That was a very pivotal summer, when lots of forks in the road were reached. Sometimes I look back and wonder what would have happened if I had taken a different fork. Ah, hindsight.

My third would probably be my daddy, John Edward Crews. He was the one person, until John Ross, who made me feel like I had any value or worth. He still sits on my shoulder and tells me I'm a good girl. Who would I have been if he hadn't been in my life?

Tell me, who are your inspirations?