I think questions like these are stupid. All this "oh if that person wouldn't have been we wouldn't have ....". Bullshit I say! If that one person didn't exist, someone else would've done it. Or maybe someone would've had the chance to do something even better. We shouldn't glorify single individuals. The world is a complex system and no single human had a big impact alone.
Also, Hironobu Sakaguchi is the God Of Gaming!
If you demand respect or gratitude for your volunteer work, you're doing volunteering wrong.