A lot of people enter the Walt Disney World Marathon as part of a fundraiser for a cause or charity. Groups like the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society have an enormous presence at the Walt Disney World Marathon, especially since they wear matching running tops, making them easily identifiable. For many of these people, raising funds for a cause is not just an exercise in charity, but one that hits very close to their hearts. One such person is Jeff Van Ry, who decided to participate in a fundraiser in honor of his sister, an Army soldier who took her own life earlier this year.
Back in our June 22 MousePlanet Mailbag (link), we ran a letter from reader Jeff, who needed some help in contacting the WDW Marathon organizers about running with his sister's bib number. His sister had taken her own life just weeks before, and Jeff was hoping to run in her memory by running with her number.
After his initial reply when I wrote back to him, I had not heard back from Jeff for some time. Then, when his letter ran in our Mailbag, Jeff took the opportunity to write back:
I came home from work and followed my tradition of looking at Mouseplanet only to see my letter and name. I was a little shocked, and I mean that in a good way. Thank you for publishing the letter. It again helped me realize that people care. The help I received from you and from the folks and EMMI have been wonderful. The process has been hard, but the time and energy you have taken made it a little easier.
My sister saw writing as an escape, when things went bad, she turned to her journals to help sort through her pain. For me, writing something makes it real. By not writing it, I could almost imagine she wasn't dead. It took me three days to work up the courage to write you the first time. Enough distance has passed, is is time.
I feel badly that I didn't write back because I was able to let you know how much you had helped me. Your prompt and kind response was a welcome tonic. Steve (from the Walt Disney World Marathon organization office) wrote me the same day telling me he would check first thing in the morning. By the next day he had confirmed her registration, took my information, and before I left for work at 6:45 a.m. that morning, I was registered for the WDW marathon. My wife and I are already planning taking our girls cross-country for their first trip Walt Disney World (we try making it to Disneyland once a year).
On your suggestion I looked into the various suicide charities. In the end I opted for SPAN USA because they had the tools in place to make the process a little easier. Rather than having to contact each person, ask for contributions, then collect them, I was able to create a web site, refer people to the site, and they handle the processing.
If you are curious, the site is at http://www.firstgiving.com/maryvanry. The picture is a little old. My sister never liked to be photographed, so this was the most recent one I could find. It was from 2003 right before she went to Iraq. The girls are now 5 and 3.
I'm slowly working my way back into running. The first day I couldn't even put on my running shoes to wear for the day because the reminded me of her. A week later I managed a run, but it was very sporadic for the waves of memories. We trained at a local park (Point Defiance), and I haven't been able to run alone there since. Two weeks ago I ran the Sound to Narrows through the same park, and was grateful I was with a few hundred people. The next day we were planning to run the North Olympic Discovery half marathon. The folks there offered me a free registration (she hadn't registered for that run). I still was unable to run because I realized Mary was my transportation to every run I had taken. She took me to the Seattle half. She took my wife and I to the airport for the Big Sur Marathon in April. We were going to carpool and I couldn't face making the drive alone.
Slowly I'm working back into condition. I ran 16 miles last week, I'll do 21 this week, and then it is back to building up. The pain and anger are gone, now I'm just running as therapy. In October I'm running the Royal Vancouver marathon, a slight break to the Seattle Half in November, and then on to Orlando. The only question now is if I honor Mary more by stopping and getting a lot of pictures along the route (especially Stitch), or I treat WDW as my Boston Qualifier. Fortunately I have time to decide.
In today's Marathon Guide, Jeff shares more about his sister, and how the goal of running the Walt Disney World Marathon brought them closer together before her passing.
Mary in her Army fatigues, visits with her two nieces. Photo by Jeff Van Ry.
About Mary
Mary was a reserve in the Washington National Guard. She was called to active duty shortly after the initial invasion of Iraq. Mary was part of the 1161st. She was responsible for moving supplies to troops across Iraq. Locally, when they got home the local newspaper called the group a “miracle” because they lost nobody on the tour. As an officer, Mary was very proud all of her troops came home alive. Her original tour was slated for 6 months, was extended to 9, then to 12, and eventually she served an 18 month tour. She was never able to make it home for a break because she wanted to make sure others who had families made it home first.
Mary was six years younger. She was an avid musician when she was younger and played the trumpet in a local drum and bugle corps. Eventually she found a preference for writing music and eventually she focused her artistic abilities into writing prose and poetry. She graduated from Evergreen State College with a degree in Biochemistry. As a civilian she worked a variety of jobs for local laboratories. Mary was an avid reader and was very well studied in many disciplines. As much as many I know, Mary possessed a 'renaissance mind.'
As I think about it, I realize that I really miss her sense of humor, mostly because it was so similar to my own. We shared the same biting, cynical, dry wit. We had different dads, so we didn't look alike. But it happened more than once when someone would tell me, you know, you have a sense of humor just like this girl I know from (insert location, school, work), her name is Mary, do you know her? Most of the time I feel I'm making jokes for my own enjoyment, but she always got them. We had that sibling ability to understand each other instantly. I wouldn't go so far as to say we were 'connected' like many twins report experiencing, but we were always able to finish of the other person's sentences, so to speak. While we only saw each other occasionally, we e-mailed back and forth constantly. It was always a witty, dry banter to keep the day going. It took me a while to not get excited when I saw I had a new message at work.
Mary and Jeff sign up for the Disney Marathon
I really don't know what my sister's motivating factor was for signing up for the marathon. I know when she came back from Iraq she was running a lot, I was just starting to train (I had made it to 2 miles). Asthma and a knee injury intervened and I stopped running until Spring of 2004, this time with the express goal of running a marathon. She told me that if I was going to do it, she would run one too. I think it fit into the 'in my life I want to' category for her, and having me do it was a good motivating factor. We began training together at that point. Originally she was going to run her first with me, but she was in the process of completing her training for a black belt in jujitsu. The last six months of 2005 were too intense to do both, so she put running on the shelf for a while. In December, she resumed her running.
Many of my best memories of Mary of when we were running. We started running when we were younger, she was 4 and I was 10. Our dad ran track in High School and college and started running again after he and mom were divorced. On our weekend visitation we would go to races with him. After a while I started running with him and when I was confident enough to go alone, he started taking my sister to run these little 5K races. She has many awards from that time, first and second place finishes. The fact that she was the only one in her age group helps, but still, she was running 3.1 miles, quite an accomplishment at that age. After entering HS, running fell by the wayside. It was always something I was going to do, one of my goals, but something I never got around to.
When Mary got back from Iraq, we started running again about the same time. She already had her military training, but it didn't take me long to build up to her level. We traditionally would meet at my place and drive to the local park, Point Defiance (Washington). It is a beautiful old growth forest right on the end of the Tacoma Peninsula. The road around the park is exactly five miles, and on Saturdays the back half of the road is blocked to all motorized traffic until 1:00 p.m. I run a lot faster than Mary since I have eight inches of height on her, but we always ran the first mile together. I have a tendency to start out too fast and burn out early. I pushed her pace up one minute and she slowed mine down one minute. When I completed my final long, 22 mile, run for the marathon, I actually had her run seven miles with me just to make sure I kept my pace slow.
What I miss most in those runs is that they were little microcosms of our conversations. Just this weekend I was running and had a random thought that just kept going; a running induced moment of mental clarity if you will. Mary and I shared those. In one conversation I recall us discussing how music from the 1980s was almost universally terrible, how music in the last 10 years has improved drastically, and how hip hop was probably responsible for raising the lyrical standard of current songwriters. OK, not the stuff of PhD dissertations, but still, fun content to chew over. We had similar discussions about family, my girls, Disney, running in general.
Jeff crosses the finish line at the 2006 Big Sur Marathon in Monterey, California. Photo courtesy Big Sur Marathon.
It was on one of these runs that she told me she was going to run the WDW marathon. It started on our trip to Disneyland after she returned from Iraq. We were walking around Disney's California Adventure (park) reflecting on how it was a perfect walking/running course, especially over by Grizzly River Rapids. Actually we thought about proposing to Disney that they should open DCA in the morning to guests wanting to run/walk and they could even sell passes for locals. This was before Disney announced the Disneyland Half-Marathon.
On one run she announced that she had decided she was going to run the Walt Disney World Marathon because she wanted to combine it with a vacation, and run in the park. In an interesting twist, I originally tried to talk her out of it. Much as I love a vacation to Disney, I told her I didn't want to waste valuable park time running and then recovering. But she was adamant; it was going to be WDW. We were going to run a couple of half marathons between my marathon and hers, and I was going to sneak in another marathon in October, but all her training was geared toward going to WDW.
I guess I have one advantage over most. Mary loved my daughters very much and she wanted them to be happy. She talked about them constantly. In that whole sibling understanding thing, I know she would want me to focus on them. Nothing can be done to change what has happened, so I have a responsibility to give as much happiness as I can to her nieces.
Jeff adjusts his shoelaces after the 2006 Big Sur Marathon. Photo courtesy of Jeff Van Ry.
Jeff is 35 years old, born and raised in Salt Lake City, Utah. After graduating high school, he moved to California to attend the University of Redlands. He met his wife in graduate school at Cal State Hayward. They have been married 13 years and have lived in Tacoma, Washington since 1998. They have two girls (“Who are about to break my heart be being old enough to go to school (3 and 5)”). Jeff works for Portfolio Strategies Inc., a small, third party money management firm in Tacoma.
Jeff has run one marathon, Big Sur, this past April 30, with a finish time of 3:52:01. “The last time I saw Mary was when she dropped us off at the airport. She died a week and two days later.”
SPAN USA
The Suicide Prevention Action Network (SPAN USA) is a national, volunteer-driven, nonprofit working to increase awareness of the toll of suicide in our nation and to develop political will to ensure that our government effectively addresses the problem of suicide. Largely thanks to the work of SPAN USA and its advocates the US Congress passed resolutions recognizing suicide as a national problem and declaring suicide prevention a national priority. Visit them at their Web site (link) for more information.
Although Jeff has already raised his goal of $2,000, you can still visit his fundraising page (link).
