As character education continues to be an objective of the social studies, the more effective educators have taken up the challenge by first understanding the principles of their discipline and the opportunities for examining the values of character to be encountered. Social studies is rediscovering the focus on the actual men and women of history as a major cog in teaching character, a method once widely used in American schools and currently utilized successfully in foreign schools. But this focus cannot be a matter of relating simple, irrelevant facts. Rather, it requires the element of story-telling. History abounds with stories of the human struggle, a perspective that opens a myriad of opportunities for character education. This article shares the story of Dr. Tom Dooley, a Navy doctor whose name and exploits have surprisingly never graced the pages of an American history textbook. Despite the fact that during the peak of the Cold War in the 1950s he was acclaimed as one of the most notable individuals in the world for his humanitarian efforts, he is today a forgotten man to most anyone under the age of fifty. Yet Dooley is in his own right a model of character from which much can be learned as teachers seek those individuals who serve as fine examples of American values and citizenship. The story of this forgotten American is also the story of values that embody the character of the American citizen that schools strive to produce: he reminded the Americans of all that they can be. (Contains 40 notes.)