“It was just tough. ”
The first run, dedicated to
Swisher and his family, started
at Camp David and followed back
roads with an intimate cluster of
runners. The run lasted 27 hours
and ended at Arlington Cemetery,
Tyler’s resting place.
“That’s where it started and
that’s where it was supposed to
end,” says Smith. “But then the
night after the run we decided to
keep going.”
CARRIE HILL PHOTOGRAPHY
FUTURE DESTINATIONS
It was clear as the group started off on the run for the Lima
Company that Smith’s initiative
was snowballing.
“Ohio became the community’s
way to thank the guys that died
for them and the ones that are still
serving,” he says. “I’ll tell ya, the
Swisher family did most of the
heavy lifting for that Lima run.
They said ‘we want to pay it forward.’”
After raising $100,000 between
both runs, the immediate future of
Always Brothers consists of a run
on Memorial Day 2013 in Seattle,
this time to help fund research
on both the physical and mental
causes of Post Traumatic Stress
Disorder and the subsequent suicides relating to PTSD. After that,
things get hazy.
“We’re not real sure,” he says.
“We’ve kind of defined ourselves
as the kind of guys that come in,
find a problem and raise money
for it. I hate the term ‘raise awareness’, but sometimes seven years
after these guys die it’s really easy
to forget their names. Just to keep
those guys alive, that’s really the point.”
Runners
enter the
90th mile
of the Lima
Company
run just
after dawn.