While four U.S. Navy Seals were holed up in a rugged, mountainous region of Kunar Province, Afghanistan, desperately fighting for their lives against an onslaught of more than 150 Taliban fighters, another Navy Seal, Lt. Cmdr. Erik S. Kristensen was leading the mission to rescue them from harm’s way. The date was June 28, 2005, and Kristensen, along with seven other Navy Seals and eight members of the United States Army’s elite unit “Night Stalkers” were killed when their MH-47E Chinook helicopter was hit by a rocket propelled grenade. Three of the four Seals on the ground also lost their lives in the battle.
“He was a guy who really wanted to be a Seal—a warrior poet in the truest sense,” says Jeff Webb, a former Navy Seal and a Naval Academy classmate of Kristensen. “In the mission he was lost on, he didn’t have to be in that helicopter, he wanted to be. He had teammates in trouble and he stepped up to do a really dangerous job. He got on the bird.”
Another classmate, U.S. Marine Corps Maj. Megan McClung was escorting journalists into the war-torn city of Ramadi, Iraq, on Dec. 6, 2006 when her Humvee was struck by a roadside bomb, killing her and two other occupants. McClung was the first female Marine to be killed in the Iraq War and the first female graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy to be killed in the line of duty since its inception in 1845.
Both McClung and Kristensen were graduates of the U.S. Naval Academy Class of 1995. Their sacrifices, along with the sacrifices of four other graduates who died in the line of duty, spurred a few of their classmates to band together and form a group to run in the 2007 Marine Corps Marathon and 10K in their honor. The alumni put out the word to the rest of the class, and received an overwhelming response. In all, about 10 percent of the entire class showed up in the first year, Webb says.
After their initial success, many members of the group wanted to expand the organization’s reach and scope, so they formed a non-profit organization called Run to Honor, with a much broader mission than the original, to honor all Naval Academy alumni lost in combat or military operations.
“We don’t want this to just be about our class,” Webb says. “We want it to be about all of our fallen heroes. We also want to reach out to families and other classes to get them more involved.”
The organization now dedicates its runs to hundreds of fallen heroes from the Naval Academy, past and present.
On Oct. 31, 2010, for the fourth year in a row, the Run to Honor team participated in its main event, the annual Marine Corps Marathon and 10K in Washington D.C.
On the Friday before the race, the group held its annual memorial dinner where members, supporters and family of the fallen heroes, come together to celebrate the lives of the men and women who gave their lives in the pursuit of freedom.
This year the memorial dinner attracted more than 200 attendees, including Dave Surgent, a Naval Academy graduate and First Command Financial Advisor.
“The Run to Honor team feels that celebrating the lives and heroism of our colleagues who died in service to our country allows their memories and accomplishments to live on,” says Surgent, an avid runner.
Thanks in large part to Surgent, the Stafford, Va., office of First Command Financial Services, Inc., became a primary sponsor (along with Under Armor) of Run to Honor during the 2010 Marine Corps Marathon. That support allowed all of the surviving family members to attend the event without cost, Surgent says.
Today, Run to Honor gets requests to participate in various events and marathons across the globe. While they only officially participate in a handful of events per year, Webb says, the foundation is set to add more dates to the calendar.
“We plan to sustain and improve on our core event, the Marine Corps Marathon,” Webb says. “It’s an annual staple of our activity and each year we want to get a group out there. But, we’re now seeing members wanting to run in other events as well, so, we’ll try to serve that need in the future.”
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