A phone call just before 10 p.m. Sunday turned into an all-day road trip, a grueling run through oppressive heat, and a chance for two western Kentucky runners to help carry the American flag across the country.
Friends Zachary Whear of Owensboro and John Pitonyak of Caneyville joined the Relay For America on Monday in Indiana, taking part in a nationwide effort to carry a single American flag more than 3,000 miles from San Francisco to Washington, D.C., where it is scheduled to arrive on July 4 in celebration of America’s 250th birthday. The relay also honors veterans by dedicating each mile of the journey to a fallen service member.
The opportunity came together quickly.
“My buddy John called me last night around 9:30 or 10 o’clock,” Whear said. “He said, ‘There’s this Relay For America. Do you want to do this?’ I said, ‘Sure, let’s go for it.'”
The pair made a late-night trip to the store for supplies, recruited a third friend to serve as their driver, then left before dawn for the four-hour drive to a point north of Indianapolis where their relay segment began.
The conditions waiting for them were brutal.
“It was really hot out,” Whear said. “It was like 90 degrees, and the humidity was so high it felt like it was over 100.”
Their assigned segment covered about 12.5 miles and had roughly 14 registered runners. Pitonyak ran more than their segment, completing more than 20 miles over about three hours, while Whear estimated he ran roughly six miles, rotating in and out as the group passed the flag between participants.
Only a couple of runners finished the entire segment because of the extreme heat, but that hardly diminished the experience.
“People who hadn’t even signed up would see us coming and run a mile with us,” Whear said. “There were kids and families joining in. People were handing out water and cheering. It was just a really awesome way of connecting everybody.”
The relay is designed so participants take turns carrying the American flag before passing it to the next runner. At the end of their segment, Whear said, everyone gathered to hold the flag together as they crossed the exchange point.
Along the route, the runners were met by police escorts through some communities and residents lining the streets to cheer them on.
“As we’re rolling through all these small towns, everyone kind of came together,” Whear said. “We didn’t know anybody we were running with, but everybody knew the mission.”
For Pitonyak, the day represented more than just another endurance run.
“It was extremely gratifying,” he said. “It was really cool to see everybody come together and celebrate. Going into our 250th anniversary, that’s pretty cool. I’m glad we did it. It was hard, but it was cool to be part of something that big that went across the entire U.S.”
Both runners said the event reminded them that common ground still exists despite the divisions often highlighted in everyday life.
“A lot of stuff always feels very divisive and disconnected,” Whear said. “But here, you know you’re carrying the flag for however far, and you know there are hundreds of other people working together to move that flag from state to state.”
Before their group began running, participants gathered for a prayer, another moment that stood out to Pitonyak.
“It was just cool to know that America is still America, and we can all gather and agree upon things like this,” he said. “It’s just cool to see that.”
