In your lifetime -- if you're lucky -- you may encounter a few people -- maybe only one -- who stand for something. Stand tall. Stand firm. Stand unbending like a century-old oak. Such a hero as this -- and they are the real heroes -- will fight like wounded tigers for what they believe is right.

One such is Mark Gilbert, a longtime resident of Lincolnwood. He's 82 now, and he believes.

Let me tell you his story. Gilbert is as intense and committed as a teen-age solider under enemy fire on the battlefield. He sees injustice and refuses to accept it. He is heroic in his challenge to wrong. He tells me he will fight to his last breath.

Despite a multitude of skirmishes and frustrating setbacks in his 12-year war with Bankers Live & Casualty, the insurance giant, and the Illinois Department of Insurance, whose role is to regulate the insurance industry, he continues undaunted and has no intention of backing down.

Gilbert charges "a conspiracy of silence -- a cover-up leading from former Attorney General Roland Burris and incumbent Jim Ryan to State Police Director Terrance Gainer to Cook County State's Attorney Jack O'Malley and his successor, Richard Devine, to Governor Jim Edgar, his insurance directors, and other appointees."

When they come under fire from an insistent, righteous ordinary citizen, many bureaucrats, politicians and huge companies commonly claim the complainant is a crank, zealot or self-serving whiner.

But Gilbert defies any such description; they simply don't apply. In the summer of 1996, he was honored as one of three recipients of the Freedom of Information Award by the National Center for Freedom of Information Studies at Loyola University. The other prominent honorees were then U.S. Sen. Paul Simon, now director of the Public Policy Institute at Southern Illinois University, and Mark Kadish, professor of Law at Kent College.

In presenting the award to Gilbert, dinner chair Dr. Edward J. Rooney, president of the Illinois FOI Council, told the gathering, "Gilbert is being honored for his courageous, never-give-up continuing struggle for accountability in government for his perseverance in a continuing struggle to correct the "system."

Here is how Gilbert describes his ongoing crusade:

"This is about BIG GUYS hitting on little guys. This is about abuse of power, abuse of public trust. This is about instruments of government chipping away at your freedom and civil rights.

"This is about citizens whose constitutional rights are attacked and whose freedoms are diminished by those sworn to protect those cherished values of democracy.

"This is about government administrators who abuse their power and abuse public trust by committing acts of criminal official misconduct, about a director of state police and other top administrators and prosecutors who cover up public integrity crimes and shield perpetrators from the consequences of their own criminal acts," according to Gilbert.

Strong stuff, but hear his story:

Gilbert's daughter, Fern, insured by Bankers Life under an individual (not group) major medical policy, was diagnosed in September 1985 with major clinical depression, a schizo-affective disorder.

Beginning in 1986, Gilbert charges that Bankers "consistently violated policy provisions and Illinois insurance laws." In December 1988, Gilbert, representing his daughter and "all those similarly situated," filed a complaint with the Department of Insurance (DOI), citing more than 20 violations of the Illinois Insurance Code. DOI director John Washurn asked for a staff response, and, in May, analyst John Morrison confirmed "violations of law" in the report he filed with his boss, chief analyst Mike Kessler, with copies to Deputy Director Lloyd Rice and Bankers vice present (Compliance) Eugene Volk. Gilbert's request for a copy was turned down.

Gilbert ultimately filed four "distinct and separate complaints of discrimination" with new DOI director Stephen F. Selcke. In July 1994, Gilbert filed a complaint of criminal conduct against DOI officials.

Soon thereafter, Gilbert received a call from DOI deputy Dale Emerson urging him to "make a deal" -- that Bankers was prepared to satisfy all demands if filed complaints were withdrawn.

"Not on your life," responded Gilbert. "The laws are there to be enforced, which would benefit all citizens, not just my daughter."

Emerson's sarcastic response: "Who appointed you guardian of all the citizens?"

Gilbert's next move was to file a petition and official misconduct complaint with Burris against Selcke and his associates.

The AG's office chose to do nothing. First Assistant Attorney General Joseph Claps, head of the criminal division, who in other, more serious criminal cases has shown little concern for justice, claimed he had no investigators and shunted the complaint to the Illinois State Police, purportedly for investigation. Claps despite his questionable role in at least two capital cases, now sits as a judge on the Cook County circuit bench.

Two weeks after Claps "disposed" of the Gilbert complaint, Selcke resigned, effective Feb. 1, 1994. He was promptly rewarded with a "plum" appointment as Vice President (Governmental Affairs) at Ameritech, where he could make good use of his stonewalling skills, at nearly double his DOI salary.

There would be no investigation. Claps "handoff" was yet another phony ploy. Gainer through deputy Kevin Eack, told Gilbert:

"This department investigates and prosecutes official misconduct involving current employees of the state. Mr. Selcke is not a current employee of the state."

Incredulous and indignant, Gilbert asked, "Are you saying that to escape prosecution for criminal official misconduct, an officer of the state need only resign to walk away scot-free?"

"Good question," responded Eack. "I'll get back to you."

Gainer, the state's highest-ranking police law enforcement officer got back with, "This matter is not one the Illinois State Police will investigate."

A frustrated but undaunted Gilbert in October 1994 filed with then-State's Attorney Jack O'Malley a petition and 82-count felony complaint of "official misconduct" on the part of Selcke, his successor and others.

Several months later, in February 1995, Gilbert filed a class action suit against Bankers Life in Cook County Circuit Court, seeking rulings on matters of law and fact, including whether Bankers violated the insurance code by discriminating against plaintiff and others: whether this conduct by Bankers constituted a breach of contract, and whether Bankers misled and failed to disclose pertinent material to plaintiff and others members of the class.

Frustrated by the slow pace of the proceedings, Gilbert, at his own expense, ran a series of small-space ads, mainly in the Chicago Tribune and Wall Street Journal.

Some pungent excerpts from Gilbert's ads:

• To State's Attorney O'Malley:
  Americans decry abuse of human rights in China. How about citizen abuse by the instruments of government here at home?
• What is the status of the "official misconduct" complaint filed with you and your Public Integrity Unit on 10/22/94? Unless this Unit takes immediate action, are we in jeopardy of running out the clock pursuant to the Illinois Statute of Limitations?
• On Oct. 6, 1995, your Public Integrity Deputy Chief Tom Donahue stated: "The citizen has no right to bring complaints of official misconduct to the State's Attorney." Does Deputy Chief Donahue speak in your voice?

No response at any point from O'Malley. "The conspiracy of silence continues," said Gilbert.

With the ads running, Gilbert received an agitated phone call from Donahue protesting that O'Malley "never received your complaint, and I have never seen your 82-count complaint." But Gilbert showed me a certified mail receipt confirming delivery.

So it went, and so it goes right up to the present. The people's servants at all levels of government -- from trusted, influential staff members to the Governor, the State's Attorney and two Attorneys General -- have continued to duck and hide, stonewall and cover up, as months and years passed with Gilbert receiving no satisfaction whatever.

What began as a fairly routine complaint against a huge insurance firm has become a cause celebre which triggered this pungent "indictment" by Gilbert:

"What began as an attempt to find justice on behalf of my daughter and others has uncovered a can of worms reminiscent of Watergate. DOI Director Selcke, his deputies and successor Richard Devine, Gainer, Burris, his successor Jim Ryan, and Gov. Jim Edgar. Their conspiracy of silence impacts millions of citizens through crimes reaching broad and deep into our lives. These Illinois administrators and prosecutorial officials take no back seat to the John Ehrlichmans, Bob Haldemans, John Deans, John Mitchells and Richard Nixon of Watergate fame. It is time for Selcke, O'Malley and the rest to take their places beside these criminals as the manipulators of truth and fact that they are."

Gilbert's strong, even extreme, words express his outrage. He sees himself as a defender of the people's liberty, like one of his heroes, the late Barry Goldwater, who said in 1964, as the Republican nominee for President, that "extremism in defense of liberty is no vice."

Those words, which might have been the rallying cry for our revolutionary forebears, brought a torrent of vitriol and criticism on Goldwater. Gilbert has stood up, unflinching, against similar harsh attack and a "conspiracy of silence" with respect to his claims and charges.

That is what makes a hero.

Next week, I'll tell you why the Gilbert story, largely buried and ignored by the mass media and daily press, is more important to the lives and fortunes of ordinary Americans than the millions of inches of newsprint and TV hours devoted to the sex life of Monica Lewinsky, ad the millions of tax dollars expended by Special Prosecutor Kenneth Starr in pursuit of the President.