On April Fool's Day 1983, Steven Newman set out on a long walk.

Four years, 15,000 miles and five continents later, he came home to Ohio with a new insight: The world is a wonderful place.

"The real hero is you: the people of the world," Newman said. "I didn't walk solo around the world. I did it with the help of tens of thousands of people who had the courage to come out of their doorways and say, Oh, would like something to drink? Or, Oh, you look tired, would you like to come in and rest? I learned real heroes have big hearts, not just big muscles."

He shared the trip with more than a million readers, and eventually went on to write "Letters from Steven" in 1987 and "Worldwalk" in 1989. Newman, known as the "Worldwalker," has appeared on more than 100 television and radio talk shows.

Newman spoke Wednesday at Southeast Missouri State University about his adventures and insights as the only man to walk solo around the world. He took ships across the oceans.

"I could not find anywhere in the world that did not have more love than meanness," Newman said. "That should give all of you a lot of hope."

He was a 9-year-old in Bethel, Ohio, when he first came up with the idea of walking around the world. And he was a 23-year-old newspaper reporter in Casper, Wyo., when he started working to make the dream a reality.

Newman was driving home from the scene of a triple homicide he had been sent to cover. "I couldn't get the image out of my mind: the blood, the cursing, the horror of it," he said.

He pulled over to the side of the road, he said, "and I asked myself, Is this what the world's all about now?"

Newman said he could have made the trip in a year, but that was too short a trip. He decided to take four years, "like going back to college," to make the trip and study the world, he said.

It took him five years to get ready for his journey, including more than three years working on oil rigs to raise money for the trip.

Newman didn't get much support for his trip. Most labeled him a fool, "and everybody said, `You're destined to die,'" he said. "But I had to know what the world is like. I can't live on this planet and not take the time to explore it."

He set out from his hometown with only a backpack. He didn't make it far when doubt set in. The backpack was too heavy, and a mile outside town he had to take it off. Discouraged, he was thinking of turning around and going home when a car pulled up.

"That's when I knew somebody had to be watching out for me," Newman said. "It was my mom."

He and his mother went through the backpack and weeded out the unnecessary items. He was on the road again.

Newman was crossing the Ohio River bridge that connects Ohio to West Virginia and was ready to give up again when he heard someone calling his name.

It was a journalism student named Tammy, and she wanted to interview him about his trip.

Newman had just decided to call it quits once he reached West Virginia, just a few steps farther down the bridge.

"I didn't have the heart to tell her the truth," he said, so he agreed to the interview. To make matters worse, Tammy told him to go back to the last town he'd walked through so she could take his picture with the mayor.

Newman "hobbled back" to town, and there was the mayor, ready to present him with the key to the city of Xenia, Ohio.

Eventually that mayor, who told Newman he was a hero, would inspire Newman to make the trip across the Atlantic.

"Because that stranger, that mayor did a simple little act of kindness for this stranger, I was able to go on and cross what I thought was going to be my last bridge. And because I crossed that bridge, I walked around the world," he said.

The key to the city was the only trophy Newman had ever gotten. Later in the trip, when he was thinking again of quitting, he took the key out of its velvet-lined box and read the slip of paper underneath.

"It said, `Enjoy your novelty bottle opener,'" Newman said, and sure enough, it pried open a bottle of soda.

He said he realized that if he didn't finish the trip, no one would ever know of the kindness of the strangers he encountered along the way, "those of us who truly do good and try to make the world a safe, fun place. I knew I had to go on. I didn't want to go back to just writing about drug dealers and people beating their wives."

As he continued east, Newman began wondering how people overseas would take to him. So Newman decided to try his luck in what some consider the most dangerous neighborhood in the world: The Bronx.

He'd spent several days wandering through the borough when a man Newman assumed was a gang member stopped him and demanded to know what he was doing in the wrong neighborhood.

Intimidated, Newman could only respond, "I'm from Ohio."

Newman told the man he was walking across America -- the same story he'd told the Ohio mayor, since he was tired of people laughing at him -- and the man took him to his friends to tell the story again.

They were impressed by his courage, Newman said. One of the group ran off and then came back several minutes later. He told Newman he deserved an award for his project, "so I stole you a bowling trophy."

After Newman left the Bronx, he "tried to dissect" the encounter.

"I decided in the end that it was nothing more complex than this: While I was with them I had been Steve Newman. That's it. They lived in a world where everybody was always trying to be something they weren't," he said.

For the rest of the journey, Newman said, he was himself. "It didn't matter to the rest of the world that I was skinny or that I didn't have much money or that I come from a poor family," he said. "It didn't matter, because what the world wanted was somebody it could befriend."

During his trip, he stayed with more than 400 families, most very poor and all strangers. Sometimes he slept on the ground, under bridges or in boxes.

All over the world he found himself trying to pantomime his mission: To walk all the way around the world.

On one leg of the journey his hosts offered him sour goat's milk mixed with camel's blood. And at one dinner in Japan, all of the food was either raw or still alive -- including a lobster.

A woman in the Shenandoah Valley saw the white trash bag he'd stretched over his backpack to protect it from the rain and thought he might be an angel, so she invited him in for breakfast.

The trip taught him the value of humility and the power of love, Newman said.

"Don't underestimate the power of love and kindness," he said. "It is still the most powerful of all forces. Don't ever be bored, because it means you are boring. The world out there is too vast, too big to go around being cynical and pessimistic."

When Newman finally made it home to Ohio, he found himself surrounded by crowds as he walked the last five miles to his hometown.

The governor was there, and Newman didn't realize it all the time, but the lawmaker had placed two bodyguards into the crowd to protect Newman from attackers.

"And here I'd gone all the way around the world by myself," he said.