In Memory of a Marine
This year’s Soldier Ride the Hamptons again honors Lance Cpl. Jordan C. Haerter, a Sag Harbor Marine who was killed in 2008 in Iraq at age 19.
Starting at 7 a.m., participants will assemble at Amagansett Farm at 555 Montauk Highway in that hamlet. After an opening ceremony at 8:30, cyclists will depart for 30 and 60-mile rides at 9, followed by those participating in a 5-kilometer walk. A 5K walk will also depart from Marine Park in Sag Harbor at 9 a.m., following an opening ceremony at 8.
A tribute to Corporal Haerter is scheduled for 10:30 at Marine Park. A “lap of heroes,” in which wounded veterans will cycle up and down Sag Harbor’s Main Street, will follow at 11. Participants will return to Amagansett Farm for a community picnic at noon, to which the public has been invited. Those wishing to eat have been asked to make a donation to the Wounded Warrior Project.
Wounded veterans will spend the afternoon doing beach activities in Amagansett, followed by dinner and a concert by Nancy Atlas in Amagansett Square at 6 p.m.
Registration for the 30 and 60-mile rides is $60, $35 for those 12 and under. Participation in the 5K walks costs $35. Online registration has ended, but participants can register on Saturday. Active-duty military personnel, their families, and students can receive a promotional code for registration at a discount by sending an email to [email protected]. Fund-raising incentives will be awarded to those raising $250, $1,000, and $2,500 who remit payment to the Wounded Warrior Project within 30 days of the event.
In 2004, Chris Carney, who owns Railroad Avenue Fitness in East Hampton, was working as a bartender when Peter Honerkamp, an owner of the Stephen Talkhouse in Amagansett, organized a fund-raiser for John Fernandez, Ian Lennon, and Hector Delgado, Long Island residents who had been wounded in Iraq. “We raised a little bit of money,” Mr. Carney said, “but there was overhead.”
“It wasn’t selling very well,” Nick Kraus, a promoter who works at the Talkhouse, remembered. “For all the work we were putting into it, the payoff was going to be minor, especially split between three wounded warriors. That’s when Chris came up with the idea.”
After the concert, Mr. Carney said, “We were sitting around late at night. The week before, I had done a multiple-sclerosis ride in the city where they had thousands of people do a 60-mile ride. I said, ‘What if, instead of having thousands of riders do a short distance, one rider goes thousands of miles, and see if we can get the same type of sponsorship?’ I thought it was a far-fetched idea that would be laughed at and quickly dismissed. But Peter said, ‘Wait a second, that could work.’ He actually took me up on it.”
A donation jar was put at the Talkhouse entrance, and the expenses needed for the cross-country trip were quickly raised. “It was kind of scary,” Mr. Carney said, “because it went from being an idea to something I actually had to do.”
John Melia, a Green Beret who was in a helicopter that caught fire and exploded over the Red Sea off the coast of Somalia in 1992, “had a $10,000-a-year budget and a one-room office in Roanoke, Va.,” Mr. Carney said. He made regular visits to Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Bethesda, Md., where he would distribute backpacks filled with “comfort items — stuff he wished he would have had when he was hurt. A pair of shorts, T-shirt, sweatpants — the most luxurious thing you would find would probably be an old-school Walkman. That was the Wounded Warrior Project.”
Mr. Fernandez had suggested the Wounded Warrior Project as Soldier Ride’s beneficiary. What began as Mr. Carney’s offhand late-night comment has given rise to an event that has raised millions for the Wounded Warrior Project, propelling a one-man venture to the nation’s top veterans’ care organization.