The heroism of Lance Cpl. Jordan C. Haerter was remembered Sunday morning as more than 400 runners and walkers, some carrying United States and Marine Corps flags, looped through Sag Harbor, passing twice over the bridge to North Haven that is named for the late Marine and past his gravesite on their way back to the start-finish line at Pierson High School.
The race memorializes the heroic actions of Haerter and his fellow sentry Cpl. Jonathan Yale in stopping an explosive-filled suicide truck in Ramadi, Iraq, on April 22, 2008, before it could reach the barracks in which some 50 Marines and Iraqi police were sleeping. It is one of nine races held throughout Suffolk County to raise money for veterans organizations — Suffolk, according to Nick Caracappa, who heads the County Legislature’s veterans committee, has the greatest number of vets in the state. Haerter and Yale each were awarded the Navy Cross by Lt. Gen. John Kelly, then the commander of United States and Iraqi forces, who eulogized them.
JoAnn Lyles, Haerter’s mother, who spoke before the race began, said that Sunday would have been her son’s 35th birthday.
Ms. Lyles said that another young man, Evan Denison, a grandson of Dering and Eleanor Yardley, who died in a motor vehicle accident in Virginia on July 23 while returning from Sag Harbor to his hometown of Berryville after having run the Jordan’s Run course with his brother, Connor, was also being remembered that day by a number of Yardley family members who participated.
The 5K’s winner was Sergey Avramenko, 38, of Hampton Bays, a frequent winner of races here, who crossed the finish line at the high school in 16 minutes and 24.73 seconds. Not far behind was Auge Martin, a 16-year-old cross-country and track runner from Pasadena, Calif., in 16:55.66.
Avramenko said afterward that he rises at 4 a.m. twice a week, does 20 minutes of yoga, drives to Southampton, where, from 4:50 to 5:40, he runs 16 400s on the high school’s track, averaging around 67 to 68 seconds, then drives back home, arriving at around 6, takes a 30-minute nap, showers, eats, and goes to work as an Uber driver. Next up for him, he said, is the Race of Hope, “to defeat depression,” at Southampton’s Agawam Park on Sunday at 8:30 a.m.
Alyssa Bahel, 25, of Wainscott, a first-timer at Jordan’s Run, was the women’s winner — and 14th over all — in 20:02.39. She’s in training, she said, for a marathon in Huntington in September. Her regimen last week included a 16-miler on roads in East Hampton and Amagansett. The 3:15 she ran in the Philadelphia Marathon last November qualified her for the Boston Marathon in April of 2024, she said.
Gavin Gilbride, Pierson’s male athlete of the year, was the recipient recently of a $1,000 scholarship that the Lance Corporal Jordan C. Haerter Memorial Fund gives out each year to a Pierson senior embarked on a military or law enforcement career. Gilbride, who on Sunday placed 34th in 21:30.63, is to begin basic training at the Lackland Air Force Base near San Antonio, Texas, soon. He knew of Haerter’s heroism, he said, through stories his grandfather had told him while he was growing up. “It’s incredible what he did,” said Gilbride. “I feel really honored.”
“We can’t do enough for our vets,” said Caracappa, 58, the Fourth District’s legislator, who lives in Selden. At the insistence of Tim Scherer, the father of fallen Marine Cpl. Christopher G. Scherer, Caracappa began running two years ago and continues to do so after having undergone aortic valve replacement surgery at Stony Brook University Hospital last November. The next veterans race, he said, will be the Heart of an Eagle 5K at Heckscher State Park on Sept. 10.
