ALEXANDRIA, Va. — The Old Town Run Club reached ground zero on the morning of Sept. 11, finishing its third annual 485-mile relay from the Flight 93 National Memorial in Shanksville, Pennsylvania, on the 25th anniversary of the attacks.
Seventy-three runners took part across two segments, filling nearly every slot the club's founders said in April they could insure and house.
"The weight of it," co-founder Ono Margioni said when asked what set this year apart. "This year was extra special with the 25th anniversary of the attacks and the 250th celebration. Our runners felt it, and everyone we saw and talked to and shared what we were doing felt the emotion and importance of it all."
Two parts, 70 legs
Thirty runners covered roughly 200 miles from Shanksville to the Pentagon across 25 legs, leaving Saturday, Sept. 5, and arriving the next day. That stretch, much of it along the Lincoln Highway through rural Pennsylvania, is the one Margioni described in April as the hardest, with significant elevation and tight shoulders.
Forty-three runners then covered 285 miles from the Pentagon to New York across 45 legs, departing Tuesday, Sept. 8, and reaching ground zero Friday morning.
About 70% of the runners had some affiliation with the Defense Department, Margioni said. The group included active-duty service members, reservists, veterans, two firefighters and several EMS and EMT personnel, along with runners with no service connection.
One was Stephen Onorato, an Australian national who ran carrying both an Australian and an American flag. Margioni said Onorato served alongside U.S. forces in Erbil, Iraq, during Operation Iraqi Freedom.
Three stops
At the Flight 93 memorial, the club dedicated a standing wreath. Margioni said a park ranger, Samuel Govan, described the events of that morning and the fate of Flight 93 to the runners.
At the Pentagon, the group was met by Maj. Gen. Stephanie Howard, the J9 director of the Joint Reserve Force at the Defense Logistics Agency at Fort Belvoir, who spoke about the country's resolve. Howard, whom Margioni works for, then ran the first nine miles of that day's route with a handful of the runners.
The Pentagon stop carries particular meaning for the club. The relay grew out of co-founder Eric Danesi's frustration that the Pentagon's annual Sept. 11 reading of victims' names is closed to the public, open only to families. He wanted a way for the rest of the region to pay its respects.
In New York on Sept. 11, NYPD officers escorted the group. The runners stopped for a moment of silence at 8:46 a.m., when the first plane struck the north tower, and again at 9:03, when the second struck the south tower.
The fundraising
The relay has raised $21,831 for the Tunnel to Towers Foundation this year, short of the $50,000 the club set as its goal when Margioni and Danesi spoke with The Alexandria Brief in April. The donation page stays open through the end of the calendar year.
Two club events remain: a Tunnel to Towers-sanctioned 5K run and walk in Virginia Beach on Sept. 19, and the Jingle Bell 5K on Dec. 6. The club also runs a Star Wars-themed kids' race each spring and launched a Commodore-to-Commodore run between its Dupont Circle and Old Town home bars in June. Margioni has said those events exist in part to fund the September relay.
Running the relay is not free. Margioni said in April that the first year cost the club roughly $25,000 to execute, and that sharper logistics and stronger sponsorship had brought the projected cost down since then.
Tunnel to Towers is named for FDNY firefighter Stephen Siller, who was off duty the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, drove to the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel, found it closed, strapped on his gear and ran through on foot to the towers, where he died along with 342 other firefighters. The foundation provides mortgage-free homes to catastrophically injured veterans and first responders, Gold Star families and the families of fallen first responders.
The club's longer-term hope, Danesi said in April, is to raise enough to pay off a Tunnel to Towers home in Northern Virginia.
Donations credited to the club can be made at dogood.t2t.org/OldTownRunClub26.
Ryan Belmore is an Alexandria resident and the founder and publisher of The Alexandria Brief. Send tips, feedback, and story ideas to ryan@alexandriabrief.com.
