Running for a Reason : Deployed Marines Are Remembered at Annual Base Races
EL TORO — Like 1,400 other runners at the Marine Corps Air Station on Sunday, John Voracek carried a message for the U.S. troops in Saudi Arabia.
All the runners wore yellow ribbons on their race numbers. But in addition to the yellow ribbons, Voracek carried a somewhat more emphatic message. On his bare chest, Voracek, 47, had written in grease pencil: “God Loves Grunt Marines and Desert Shield.”
“I’m an ex-Marine, an ex-jarhead, and what I’m doing is keeping faith with my brothers over there,” Voracek explained. “I was in ‘Nam, class of ‘65-66. I spent four years in the Marine Corps, and I’ve got some friends from this base who’re over there with (Operation) Desert Shield. I’m wishing them luck and hope for a speedy return. And I’m hoping they kick some butt over there.”
Voracek, a Costa Mesa free-lance photographer, was part of the colorful crowd at the air station runways on Sunday morning. The runners had come to take part in the 3rd Annual Leatherneck Run of the Runways. The three races were a 5-kilometer (3.1 miles), a 10-kilometer (6.2 miles) and a half marathon (13.1 miles). All the races followed courses along the vast runways of the air station.
In previous years, 200 to 300 Marines participated in the races, while many more helped greet the civilian runners visiting the station. But with their ranks depleted by Operation Desert Shield, only about 100 Marines entered the events.
The ubiquitous yellow ribbons noted the absence of many Marines.
“The general thought was this is a good time to dedicate this race to our Marines who are gone,” said Maj. Russ Tippett, 41, the air station’s recreation director.
Tippett said the Run of the Runways was expected to raise about $5,000 for the air station’s Morale, Welfare and Recreation Fund. The fund was recently tapped to send morale-boosting items to the El Toro Marines now stationed in Saudi Arabia.
“We sent an airplane last Thursday that was loaded with about 18,000 pounds of recreation gear, and the money for those items came from the Morale, Welfare and Recreation Fund,” Tippett said. “The stuff on that plane included gym equipment, board games, about 4,000 to 5,000 books, ice cream machines, snow cone machines, popcorn machines--things to make Marines happy in a place so far away.”
Like many other Marines at the race, Tippett said he was thinking of his comrades overseas. “The helicopter squadron I came from is over there,” he said. “You always think about your friends.”
Maj. Les Pagano, 38, a supply officer, added, “The people over there are on our minds. You can’t help but . . . think about them. Near the finish line, one civilian, Monica Lawrence of Laguna Niguel, held her 4-month-old son, Daniel. Daniel, in turn, clutched a small American flag in his chubby fist. Lawrence said that she and the baby were waiting for her father-in-law, Robert Lawrence, 53, of San Juan Capistrano, to complete the half-marathon run. Robert Lawrence, after finishing the race, joined his flag-waving grandson and said, “I’m glad people are remembering the ones who are over there. I hope everybody remembers them today.
