November 3, 2001

The flag was successfully delivered to Mississippi on time at 1100 CDT, Tuesday, October 23. The efforts in Alabama by all involved were truly inspirational! Also, the number of people we had who just showed up to run, help or participate was outstanding! Some special mentions and inspirational stories are below:

Bill and Benje Estes, two hearing-imapired and highly-talented runners, ran with the flag Sunday night thru Talladega County. My recommendation – don’t get in a race with either of these two – they’ll run you into the ground! Bill and Benje, and Bill’s son Will all did an outstanding job during the run. The editor at Silent News contacted us for more information so they could run a story about these two inspiring American patriots.

Martha Faye Baker, a cancer patient undergoing chemotherapy, ran with the flag THREE TIMES through Bessemer and Jefferson County into Calhoun County. Martha Faye’s segments were all between noon and 3:00 PM, when the temperature was in the 80’s and the sun was blazing! She is a true inspiration and will always be in our thoughts and prayers!

Colleen Murphy joined us in Woodstock. She’s a friend of Martha Faye Baker and doesn’t run much. However, she took that flag and just about left us in the dust, in the hottest part of the day! A finer Irish lass I’ve never met!

Curt Jarvis joined the run Monday morning in Birmingham. Curt had laid the groundwork for our national media coordinator, Todd Wissing, to appear on the Rick & Bubba Radio Show Monday morning as the flag passed thru Birmingham. Curt ran about 10 miles Monday morning and afternoon, then decided he was having so much fun he’d just hang with the caravan all the way to Mississippi! And did he come in handy! Curt went above and beyond the call of duty when he took the RV during a stop in Eutaw and dumped the lavatory for me! Obviously, that alone deserves special recognition!

Mallory Slaughter got a call from Curt Jarvis Monday night saying we were a little tight on runners going thru the western part of Tuscaloosa County. Mallory hopped in the car with her friend Cara and Cara’s dog Berkley to come give us a hand. Mallory had already run about twelve miles Sunday afternoon near the Georgia/Alabama line, but she couldn’t get enough of a good thing! She ran several more miles for us that night. For a while there, I was wondering how we might rig the flagpole so that Berkley the dog could run with it. Luckily, we had a huge crowd waiting at the Piggly Wiggly in Eutaw, so Berkley was able to take the night off!

Regina Moore and her daughters Krista & Kacie joined us in Jefferson County and went on into Tuscaloosa County Monday, October 22. Regina is the national organizer and founder of Strike Force Freedom Cry, an organization to honor POW’s and MIA’s.

Mementos - I plan to mail out some sort of memento from the event to everyone who showed up. I still need addresses for a few people I know ran or participated. I also need names and addresses of those who just showed up to run or participate without having signed up on the website. Even if your family member or friend came out just to ride along and show support, please e-mail me their name and an address where I can send a memento. If you see a friend who participated, please ask him or her if he or she has e-mailed me his or her address, and if not, please ask him or her to do so (bladeryan@aol.com).

T-shirts – the national coordinators desperately wanted to give all runners and volunteers a free t-shirt from the Flag Run, however corporate sponsorship was lacking in this area. The way to order a t-shirt is thru the www.flagrun2001.org website at $15 plus shipping. We’re very sorry we couldn’t find a way to get everyone a free t-shirt, but we thank you for understanding the limitations of this grassroots organization in the funding area.

Pictures – e-mail pictures to pictures@flagrun2001.org. The picture formatting requirements are as follows:

• Format: Please send in JPEG format with minimum compression (best quality).
• Size Requirements: Please resize your pictures so that they are no bigger than 800 pixels high or wide.
• Selection: Please exercise some editorial restraint. Pick your best photos.
• Identification: Please include brief text about what state and town/city the photo was taken in. We will use these to name the photos for storage.
• Diary Information: If you have a story to go along with your small collection of pictures, include that and we'll include that as a diary entry that will include the photos.
• Attach to E-Mail: Please attach no more than 5 pictures per e-mail. This keeps the size of each e-mail message reasonable.

Diaries & Narratives – If you’d like to write a brief description of what you or a friend or family member did in the run, e-mail it to: diaries@flagrun2001.org and it will be added to the Alabama Web Page.

Stats – to see some interesting statistics on the Flag Run, see http://www.flagrun2001.org/stats.html.

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