Taking The High Road

Young man walks to support fellow veterans

From The Redwood Times by Mary Anderson, December 10, 2008

Eddie Gray arrived in Garberville on Tuesday, Dec. 3, in the fourth month of a walk around America that he started on April 3 from his home in Ashland, Mont. Eddie is a Northern Cheyenne and a Marine veteran. He joined the Marines in 1997.

So far he has walked Interstate 90 to Spokane, Highway 19 from Spokane to Seattle, and south along the West Coast, with occasional diversions inland to meet with other veterans and Native American tribes.

On his way through Humboldt County, he went to the Hoopa Reservation and the Blue Lake and Bear River Rancherias. He also tries to contact veterans groups along the way.

Eddie was on his third pair of Nikes in Garberville.

”I stand by Nike,” he says. “They make good shoes.”

The soles of the Nikes he was wearing in Garberville had worn thin, but Eddie was expecting a new pair to be waiting for him in the General Delivery Box at the Willits Post Office.

Before he left Montana, he spoke to the third grade class of his hometown Catholic school. He mailed his worn-out first pair of Nikes back to the class and calls them on the phone every so often to let them know his progress. He often gives talks in schools as he walks along.

Eddie first got the idea of walking around America when he was in his twenties. He's now 33. At first, he thought of it as something he would do for himself, but his vision of the walk grew bigger after he broke his sternum in an accident.

Once a Marine, always a Marine, he says, and he's technically still on call for another year. He joined in 1997 and was discharged in 2000 because of the accident that broke his sternum.

”I died because my heart was bruised,” he says. “I've actually died seven times in my lifetime, so I'm on my eighth life and I've one more after. That just gives me more reason to do this walk before anything else happens.”

Eddie says he thought of the walk as a way of meeting Americans, “the people I could have died for and whose freedoms I was protecting.”

As he began to lose comrades to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, his vision grew broader.

”After this war started and I started losing buddies in Afghanistan and Iraq -- I lost a lot of them in Iraq -- it started becoming more than for myself. It was for them and for all veterans that have served, that have died, that are active duty members and reserves as well.”

It's a spiritual journey for Eddie, who has PTSD that flares up when he loses another buddy to the war.

”I've been to a lot of funerals,” he says. “It's a cleansing walk for me personally but it's for them as well, and for America, I guess.”

Gray is a member of the American Legion of Montana, Adjutant Post #077 Lame Deer, but he includes the VFW, AmVets, the Marine Corps League, Toys for Tots, and the Wounded Warrior Project in his heart as he walks along.

He was once a long distance runner, he says, and his walk brings him to the same meditative state as running.

”I walked 54 miles in 33 hours to get from Fortuna to Garberville,” he says. “To me it's not that big a deal.”

He says that when he got to Garberville, he reconnoitered the town to find the post office and the Veterans Hall, and places where he needed to go. It was kind of a recon of the town, he says, “It's not a big town, but it made it easier for me to know where everything is.”

When he stopped at the Visitor Center he saw a copy of the Redwood Times and walked up to our office for an interview. We directed him to Brian Ormond who made a lot of phone calls to let the local American Legion and VFW vets know Gray was here. The result was several veterans came to meet Gray, took him out to lunch, and Loren Pancoast invited him to spend the night in the Pancoast home.

”That's usually how it goes for me,” he says. “People invite me to sleep on their couch. People here in Garberville are friendly. They call Fortuna the friendly city but actually this place is more friendly than Fortuna. I feel really welcome here.”

From Garberville, he plans to continue walking south to the Mexican border. He hopes to cross over into Mexico and then continue east along the southern border of the U.S. to Jacksonville, Florida, where he was stationed for a while. He'll be heading north along the East Coast, hoping to stop at Parris Island and Camp Lejuene, Washington, D.C., Ground Zero in New York and then up to Maine. He wants to step over the border into Canada when he gets to Niagara Falls -- just to say I've been there, he says, and then he'll walk westward towards Montana,

What does he hope will happen to those he meets on the way? He has it written down and carries it with him: Go out and volunteer to welcome troops home, send care packages, donate to local American Legions and other charities that help veterans and wounded service members. Just because you do not wear a uniform does not mean that our military and veterans stand alone. As long as they have strong citizens that have their back, Democracy will be the shining light that defeats the dangers that terrorists try to unleash.

Gray would also like to see improvements at the Veterans Administration.

”I talk to a lot of veterans. The reason a lot of veterans don't join organizations is because they don't feel like the organizations are helping them enough with the VA to give better care. They have a term for VA that's not really good and we'd better keep that out of it. If someone has cancer from Agent Orange, the VA will just put it off and put it off until that person dies. They find the least cost way to help a veteran or active duty person. To them it's a problem, to me it's personal. I don't like the VA myself. I've talked to a lot of people that work with the VA and a lot of people have good intentions but the higher up you get the more the intention is to save dollars than to save people.”

Source: Redwood Times

Link: http://www.redwoodtimes.com/local/ci_11186219