I doubt that you know the story of Milton Olive, a remarkable young man who received the Medal of Honor in 1965. I didn’t either, until lately. That’s how it is. We remember the Hitlers and the Stalins because evil lingers for such a terribly long time. But when people like Olive perform beautiful acts of kindness and courage, they are soon quietly wrapped in the obscuring mists of yesterday and forgotten.

As Goethe said, “Sin writes histories, goodness is silent.”

But goodness is not completely silent about Milton Olive, and he is not altogether forgotten. Certainly not in Chicago, his hometown. A pleasant park there bears his name. It sits on a quiet point of land that juts into Lake Michigan near the gleaming towers of Lake Shore Drive, washed by cold waters and cool breezes. It is a fine place to walk, as I did earlier this spring.

A sign by the gate as you enter says they awarded this young black man the Medal of Honor posthumously. Farther on, set back to one side, you find a granite monument with bushes growing behind it like a thick dark curtain. Someone has left a weathered grapevine wreath that leans against the foot of the stone. A large metal plaque bears a bas-relief of Olive and the words of his citation as it was signed by President Lyndon B. Johnson.

Here is what Pvt. 1st Class Milton Olive III of the 173rd Airborne Brigade did in Vietnam on Oct. 22, 1965. His platoon was on patrol in thick jungle near Phu Cuong. There was a firefight with the Viet Cong, who fled. He and four other soldiers pursued them – a white lieutenant, a Hispanic sergeant and two black privates. Suddenly a grenade crashed through the heavy undergrowth and dropped into their midst. Olive grabbed the grenade with one hand, pulled it to his body, and fell upon it to take the blast.

He died. The others lived. He was 18 years old.

By reports, Olive was thin, friendly and quiet. An only child and the apple of his parents’ eyes, he was proud to wear the uniform and the jump wings. He worked for a time in voter registration down South, so there was a preview of courage. But otherwise he seemed much like all the other guys.

As I read the citation, I marveled. The nobility of his act shines like the sun. And yet it is mysterious, too. What could move a man to wrap himself around a pound of fragmentation metal and high explosive so he might spare his comrades? No one can say exactly what impulse impelled him to this last embrace. No one knows his final thought. And what of the other grunts trapped in that green hell where he took the blast that nonetheless wounded three of them? I wondered how this sudden shattering moment changed their lives, and how they used the years he bought them with his flesh and blood.

It is possible to learn a little about this. A man named Neil Mishalov runs a touching Web site where he publishes citations and remembrances of all those who received the Medal of Honor in Vietnam and Iraq. Olive’s story is told on the site at www.mishalov.com/Olive.html .

Posted there is a fine article by Don Terry, an award-winning reporter for the Chicago Tribune. In 2002, he interviewed the four old soldiers whose lives were saved that day. They were graying grandfathers by then, though Olive was forever 18. Terry tells of life changes for the better, but no miraculous Paul-on-the-road-to-Damascus transformations. To all appearances they remained rather unremarkable.

Two served in the Army until retiring; one worked a solid middle-class job for many years; the other knocked around, joined a religious sect, spent some time in jail. Terry calls them “the ordinary, everyday heroes we send off to war and then forget.” All of them acknowledged their debt. The long-ago sergeant reverently kept Olive’s mangled dog tag. When he is gone, it will pass to the one-time lieutenant.

But even a skilled reporter like Terry can only scratch the surface of lives wrenched by an event so profound. It is hard to know what truly happens deep in a heart seared by such blinding and elemental goodness. Even the men themselves are probably uncertain.

It is good that we have Olive Park and the Mishalov Web site to memorialize the sacrifice of Olive and others like him, and to speak to us of truths we should remember. In a time when reports of cruelty, greed and fear flood the media 24 hours a day, these memorials remind us there is another side to humanity as well. They remind us that men are also capable of magnificent acts of generosity, selflessness and courage. They remind us that sometimes we can soar.

The citation on the metal plate says Olive’s actions were above and beyond the call of duty. This is true, as far as it goes.

But other words really should be there too, words spoken centuries ago: “Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.”