Run to remember

Memorial Day provides time to commemorate all those who have lost their lives in service to their country.
In that same spirit, 19 runners and a host of volunteers will spend next weekend honoring and remembering 252 specific heroes.
Indiana’s Run for the Fallen route will run through Jay County again this year, stopping in Portland for a special ceremony at 4:40 p.m. Friday and then continuing May 14 and 15 on a 138-mile trek from Fort Wayne to Indianapolis.
Through a couple of happy coincidences, the weekend will be focused on military service. A breakfast honoring students who will be joining the military after graduation is scheduled for 7:30 a.m. Friday morning at Jay County High School, and senior Robert Myers of the JCHS chapter of the National Honor Society is organizing a color run for the morning of May 14 in support of Wounded Warrior Project (see related story).
Portland’s Donald Gillespie was one of 13 core runners who participated in the event last year, and after a few days of rest last May he quickly committed to returning.
“Physically it was really tough on me. Emotionally it’s tough,” said Gillespie. “But there is no greater cause for me.
“When I saw families standing at these mile markers, and I saw little kids standing there with homemade signs that say, ‘We miss our daddy,’ if that doesn’t want to make you just run …
“I will be a part of this as long as they allow me to be a part of this organization, and the run.”
He has taken on a larger role this year, stepping in as the run coordinator after 2015 leader Brad Harris was called to duty in Germany.
Gillespie’s responsibilities have included coordinating the core runners — there will be 19 this time, with 10 returnees and nine newcomers — and recruiting others to join them along the route. He hopes to have as many as 50 local students, ranging from fifth grade to college and including several who have committed to military service, taking part for the last few through Portland to Freedom Park.
Also taking part in a portion of the runner will be a Fort Wayne TV personalities Hannah Strong and Brooke Welch, a South Adams High School graduate who will run several miles through Berne.
Anyone is welcome to join along the way, as long as they can keep up the pace.
The run will take much the same route as it did last year, with Fort Wayne Mayor Tom Henry sending the runners off from Allen County War Memorial Coliseum at 7:30 p.m. Friday. In teams of four and five, they will carry the Indiana, United States and Honor and Remember flags with them along with the biography of a fallen soldier. They will stop each mile to honor one or more fallen soliders, reading their biographies and spending time with their families.
Each team will run for several miles before returning to an accompanying recreational vehicle while the next team takes over.
Each of the first two days will span 52 miles, with the runners scheduled to reach Berne at 2 p.m., Geneva at 2:50 p.m., Bryant at 3:30 p.m. and the north side of Portland about 4:30 p.m. Friday. Nick Taylor, a South Adams High School graduate and Army specialist who was killed in Afghanistan in 2012, will be honored at Muensterberg Plaza in Berne, and Andrew Whitacre, a JCHS graduate and lance corporal in the Marine Corps who was killed in Afghanistan in 2008, will be honored at Bryant Wesleyan Church.
Day one concludes at Freedom Park, where a personalized Honor and Remember flag will be presented to the family of Lance Cpl. Cameron Babcock, a Plymouth native who was killed in an accidental barracks shooting in 2008.
Such presentations are often done in hometowns on anniversaries of a birthday or date of death, said Indiana Honor and Remember chapter director Don Finnegan, but the Babcock family agreed to accept their flag in Portland after visiting the the 2015 run.
“This will be special,” he said.
“We’re doing this for them,” he added of all of the families involved. “They are just so appreciative of somebody remembering their son or daughter.
“The major objective is to make awareness to the American people, the cost of freedom, that is not free. We as a nation owe it not only to remember the hero by name, but the family who lives Memorial Day every day of their lives.”
Following the ceremony at Freedom Park, the runners and volunteers will have dinner at American Legion Post 211 in Portland and then spend the night at Holiday Inn Express. They will be up bright and early to begin their second 52-mile stretch from Freedom Park at 7:30 a.m. May 14.
They are scheduled to arrive at Redkey Town Hall at 9:20 a.m., and then will continue on along Indiana 67, Indiana 28 and Indiana 3 to Muncie. The only change to the route this year will take them through Yorktown and Daleville, rather than along the Muncie bypass, en route to ending day two in Anderson.
On May 15, they’ll travel the final 34 miles from Anderson to Indianapolis culminating with a ceremony in Veterans Memorial Plaza at 1:10 p.m.
Organizers could have chosen a different route this year, such as through southern Indiana. But they decided to stick with the same path in part because of logisitics and in part because of the support from local communities.
Gillespie remembers his team being in one of the RVs as the run reached the south side of Berne last year.
“We were resting, until we saw a group of kids along the side of the road,” said Gillespie. “It was the full elementary and it was the middle school had all come out. I think every one of us emptied out to run that line.”
South Adams had let its students, who were screaming, waving flags and high-fiving the runners, out of their classrooms late in the school day to support the runners.
That theme continued with an outpouring for Whitacre in Bryant and supporters lining the streets for the final few miles late on that steamy Friday afternoon.
“Portland, it was tremendous,” said Gillespie, who a year ago noted that his fellow runners couldn’t stop talking about the support they received in Adams and Jay counties. “There were lots of people in Portland, lots of people in Jay County. Bryant did a very nice stop for Andrew Whitacre.”
He hopes to see the same type of turnout for the end of Friday’s first leg and the beginning of the second on the next morning.
“Jay County is a giving community,” Gillespie said. “ And I just would like a big crowd when we come through town.”