Marine Corps Logistics Base Barstow

MARINE CORPS LOGISTICS BASE BARSTOW, Calif. -- The former Marine corporal looked like a well-aged Forrest Gump as he continued his coast-to-coast mega-marathon May 10 in front of Headquarters Battalion Marines at MCLB Barstow.With a slow but steady pace, 64-year-old Kenn Kemper, sporting a foot-long silver beard and wearing a white "Great Amerithon" hat, ran with active-duty Marines for the first time since 1968, the year the former legal clerk got out of the Marine Corps.The 1.5-mile morning run from the front gate to the back gate of the base on historic U.S. Route 66 was less than five percent of the great grandfather's total miles for the day, but the beam of excitement in his brown eyes shouted that the short run contained 95 percent of the day's enjoyment.Unlike Gump, the St. Louis, Mo., native has a reason for running about 26 miles six days a week for the next five months from the coast of California to the rocky shores of Maine.Kemper, a chaplain for the Veterans Affairs Hospital in Phoenix and assistant pastor for New Horizons Church in Avondale, Ariz., started his 3,200-mile journey, called the Great Amerithon, May 2 in conjunction with the National Day of Prayer's 52nd anniversary observance in Santa Monica, Calif. From Santa Monica his course follows Route 66 to St. Louis. Instead of following Route 66 to Chicago, he plans to go east through Ohio and to Philadelphia and New York City. He plans to be in New York City on Sept. 11 before running to Portland, Maine. His mission is to influence U.S. citizens to get involved in the spiritual, educational, political, business and fitness life of their communities. The Great Amerithon is a series of runs in which local participation is encouraged. People are invited to join at locations along the route to show their support for their national heritage. Kemper is collecting signatures for the Great Amerithon message during his journey and plans to make a leather-bound book of them and hand deliver them to President George W. Bush as a demonstration of the resolve of the people of the United States to stand for what is right and just. When Kemper stops at various locations throughout his course, he speaks to people and distributes New Testament Bibles.Kemper said he hopes to raise awareness of the importance of the nation's Christian heritage, rally support for Christ-centered community programs with those in need, and commemorate the sacrifices made to preserve the United State's freedom and way of life. Although plans for the Great Amerithon began 18 months before the Sept. 11, 2001, Kemper also hopes to honor the heroes who gave their lives to help others during the tragedies."America's Christian heritage is important," said Kemper. "Recently, we have seen a surge of patriotism and focus on God's blessings on our people. ... Some are beginning to say it is beginning to drain. I want to bring a grass-roots message from the people of America to the President. That message is that we are one nation under God, and because of that we are stronger than ever."The run is patterned after the 1928 "Bunion Derby," an 84-day international transcontinental foot race from Los Angeles to Chicago and then to New York City aimed at promoting the then-newly built Route 66. Andy Payne, a 19-year-old Cherokee farm boy from Foyil, Okla., won the race by running a marathon and a half each day for 84 consecutive days covering a total of 3,423 miles.Unlike the Bunion Derby, the Great Amerithon is a free, public event."This run is designed so that when we come to a town or city ... people can run with us," said Kemper. "They can run any part of the race they want to. They can run across their state or they can run just a marathon or 10K."When Kemper started the Great Amerithon, there was a grand-prize incentive for people to take up the fitness challenge of running the entire course, according to Kemper. The runner who finished the Great Amerithon from start to finish with the fastest accumulative time would have won an authentic 325 B.C. Greek coin, with Hercules on the obverse and Zeus on the reverse, mounted in a specially minted metal medallion; a fresh laurel flown in from Greece; and a trip to Greece for the next Olympics.Although a few people started the course with Kemper and ran with him for the first few days, no one has continued with him on foot."But people can still win the wreath and the coin," said Kemper of the consolation prize. All they have to do is finish 1,500 miles of the course in the fastest accumulated time.Even if other people don't join Kemper on his daily marathons, he isn't alone. His public relations or "reconnaissance" man, Mike Shull, and his dietician and physical therapist, Eric Harris, a former Marine Corps machine gunner, ensure Kemper is taken care of throughout the mega-marathon.As he's been running, Shull drives ahead to organize the event locally, reserve rooms in motels on Route 66, and identify restaurants at which to eat. When Kemper reaches the desolate wilderness of the Mojave Desert, he'll roll out a sleeping bag, sleep under the stars and eat whatever nutritious meals Harris cooks.Along with the fitness challenge, Kemper is also challenging people to look beyond their immediate circumstances and to do what they can to help change lives and fortify a hope for the future.The hardest circumstance Kemper is trying to look beyond during his run across the United States is his knee problem."My knee's giving me trouble because I hurt it playing football for the Marines," Kemper said. "I was in the hospital for a couple of months, and now (the knee injury) is coming back to haunt me."Muscle stiffness or soreness isn't as bad as the knee problem, thanks to Harris."I run for about four hours and then Eric Harris gets my legs all limbered up again, and then I run for another four hours. I try to run anywhere from eight to 10 hours a day," said Kemper, who also said he gets about six hours of sleep each night.But his pleasure apparently far outweighs his pain. Two things he said he enjoys about his 8- to 10-hour runs six days a week are meeting with people and traveling.Because of his faith in God and love for people, he said he doesn't want people to celebrate evil and destroy what is good, and he knows that evil will prevail when "good" people do nothing. He stresses that unless people stand strongly for something, they will fall for anything."We have a lot of people who believe in the American way of life, believe in having God in it, but they don't speak up," said Kemper. "They just sit on their laurels and they don't do anything." He said he hopes his traveling will wake some people up from their complacency or apathy. It was Kemper's love for traveling that indirectly led him to joining the Marine Corps in 1960. Kemper was hitchhiking shortly after graduating from the University of Houston. The driver who picked Kemper up stopped at a restaurant to eat, and Kemper used the restroom. Kemper discovered after coming out of the restroom that the driver took off with all of Kemper's belongings."There I stood in Austin, Texas. I didn't have a thing," said Kemper. "I thought, 'Well, I wanted to go in the service; I might as well go in now.' So I went to the Marine Corps and I said, 'Give me a piece of paper and let me sign it before I change my mind.' The next day I was off to MCRD."As a private first class, Kemper married Marilyn, whom he grew up with in St. Louis. He was stationed with the 11th Marines at Marine Corps Base Camp Pendleton, Calif., and subsequently transferred to Marine Corps Air Station El Toro, Calif. After MCAS El Toro, he went to Camp Smith, Hawaii, where he worked for Lt. Gen. Victor H. Krulak, who had administrative control over all of the Marines in Vietnam and was responsible for their training and readiness.Kemper knows the dread of being "in the rear with the gear" because he wasn't able to get transferred to Vietnam, but his brother, also a former active-duty Marine, was in Vietnam. "I didn't get to go so I took 30 days leave and got on a military plane and went to Vietnam ... so I could see my brother. Most people tried to get away from (Vietnam)," Kemper said. Kemper's sense of duty and volunteerism during his six years of service were displayed in such things as playing football and being a regular member of the base color guard. He said he wanted a career in the Marine Corps but that his now-wife of 41 years didn't care for the military family lifestyle. "I enjoyed the physical part of it, and I liked the travel part of it as well," said Kemper."I tried to stay in the reserves after I got discharged, but I got so busy with civilian life that I just let that slag, and I wished I hadn't had done that," said Kemper. "Then I could have stayed a little closer to (the Marine Corps), because I love the Marine Corps. I really think the United States needs more of it. We need people to have the discipline that it provides."Poor physical fitness is usually a symptom of a lack of discipline and is characteristic of many people in the United States, said Kemper."The average person just can't walk very far; people are just unhealthy," he said. "If people see me do (the Great Amerithon), they'll say, 'If that old man can do it, I guess I can do it,' and maybe they'll get back in shape."Although Kemper was in good health while in the Marine Corps, his physical fitness slowly declined after he got out.After he was discharged, he went back to St. Louis and, because of high security clearance he held in the Marine Corps, got a job with the McDonnell Aircraft Corp. as an office worker the same day he applied. He then decided to become self-employed and eventually owned his own plumbing business, swimming pool company, restaurants, landscaping company, and classic and antique car auction business.His busy lifestyle didn't leave much room for physical fitness, and he eventually found himself as a self-described 236-pound couch potato. "I couldn't do one push up; I'd just gone to pot," said Kemper.A few years ago, he discovered he had a benign tumor, which was removed and believed to be the onset of colon cancer. After he recovered from the surgery, he took the advice of his doctor and began to exercise regularly, eventually dropping about 60 pounds. During the summer of 2000, he decided to challenge himself with a bike ride the length of the United States on Route 66 and onto Maine. During the bike ride, Kemper did more for others than he could have imagined he did for himself. He spoke at prisons, schools and churches, and distributed 1,800 New Testament Bibles. Significant donations were also received to fund summer camps for underprivileged children. One thing that stood out to him as he met hundreds of people is that they wanted to know if there was something more to life, something they could be a part of that was bigger than themselves, something that offered hope for the future. His dream to create an opportunity for people to reach beyond their own neighborhood and daily routine to join with friends and family in a special celebration of life and national pride was born. "I felt, when I did the bike ride two years ago, that our morals and everything about America was kind of decaying, just like the highway is decaying," Kemper said.Before Kemper began challenging people of all walks of life and worldviews to turn away from the decay that is gripping neighborhoods and destroying many lives throughout the country, he challenged himself to prepare for battle by training for a year and a half."When he told me what he wanted to do, I thought it was crazy, said Tim Sparkes, one of Kemper's personal trainers, who worked with Kemper before both his cycling and running adventures. Never in my life has anybody told me they wanted to run across the country. I didn't know what to do; we figured it out as we went along."His program was really intense, and we had to start from scratch," Sparkes said. "We had to train him a lot different than for his bike ride. We did a lot of high endurance, high-rep work, a lot of leg and muscle training. During his training, Kemper carried the World Trade Center flag to the steps of the Arizona Capitol and prayed for the country on Veterans Day. He also picked up the Olympic torch at the Tucson, Ariz., train station and then carried it and ran with other torchbearers throughout the city on Jan. 13."Once he puts his mind to something, he just goes after it," Sparkes said. "He's willing to go to any length to make his goals."After his 18 months of training, Kemper's trainers and doctors said he was ready.Realizing that being ready and showing up is not what matters, but that winning after getting there is what matters, Kemper clinched his first "win" with a run in March from Phoenix to Wickenburgh, Ariz., about a 30-mile run."That was the first marathon I'd ever done in my life," said Kemper. "I never ran a marathon in my life; now I'm running one a day. But I'm a slow runner. I don't really run; I jog. If I didn't jog, I couldn't do a marathon every day." On the day he continued his journey through the desolate Mojave Desert, Kemper received a Marine Corps-fashion hail and farewell, a 1.5-mile run at a "recon" shuffle with ample singing of cadences. Marines here could escort him to the back gate, but couldn't open the gate for him and run with him off base because of security reasons. Although he had to travel back to the front gate and around the outside of the base to the back gate, running with Marines again made up for the detour."It was an honor to be in the company of such fine people as you," said Kemper about the Marines. "It is such a comfort to know that there are men and women like you who are willing to give their lives for our freedom. Our countrymen need to have the same integrity as the Marines."