Second in a series
Re “Latter Day American Hero Runs Patriotism Into Style Again”
[img]2643|right|Mike and Laura Vitti||no_popup[/img]Dateline Torrance – Saturday will mark the third-month anniversary of Mike Vitti’s cross-country hike, doubtless the most unusual, and honorable, journey under way anywhere in America.
Timed for 7½ months, concluding at the Army-Navy football game in mid-December, the 28-year-old Greater Philadelphia native is schlepping a 7,100-kilometer route in memory of the 7,100 persons who have been killed in the global war on terror.
He is colorful in triplicate, red, white and blue.
He is just a guy, an all-American who is all American. Just as he was rising in his chosen field, a high-powered business, he stepped aside for a year, first to prepare for and then to execute an elongated patriotic gesture that the ex-soldier believes in, from his soul to his soles.
Mr. Vitti, married to his high school girlfriend, is not merely pursuing attention. He just is making one man’s statement about his passionate love for his country and these times.
How unusual in strikingly cynical times.
Averaging 23 miles a day, he logs a traditional workday, seven to eight hours.
Does he jog or walk? “Mostly hiking,” Mr. Vitti said recently at the South Bay home of Marion and Linda Ferrara, whose Army son, Lt. Matt Ferrara, was killed seven years ago in Afganistan. “I try to keep a 3½ to 4 mile an hour pace. Most of the walking is paralleling major highways. I may walk train tracks. You can’t walk on interstates or highways.”
How did Mr. Vitti plot his course?
“First,” he said, “I wanted to walk a kilometer for each person killed in action during the global war on terror. I needed. As I looked at ways to do it, simply going L.A. to New York or Miami to Seattle, wouldn’t work. Wasn’t far enough.
“Part of the outreach of the project is to raise awareness. I looked for the largest population centers I could walk through.”
So the Vitti team settled for coming down the length of the West Coast, stepping through the southern United States, taking a left at Florida and finishing in the late fall by walking up the East Coast.
You may follow Mr. Vitti’s trek via (www.mikeshikingforheroes.com and Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Mikeshikingforheroes/timeline).
