American Legion Post 586 hosts Be the One 5K Run/Walk
American Legion Post 586 hosted the Be the One for Suicide Awareness 5K Run/Walk on Saturday, April 25, featuring a charity run benefitting the Save a Warrior organization and a resource fair with booths from local non-profit organizations offering mental health, suicide prevention, and veterans’ services.
“Save a Warrior is an organization that basically helps veterans and first responders deal with post-traumatic stress,” American Legion Post 586 1st Vice Commander Brian Fowle said. “It could be something from their deployment or something from early childhood; it goes all the way back.”
“It’s a great program,” he said. “We’ve had a few of our members go through it.”
The 5K run/walk’s route started on North 3rd Street, proceeded north onto the recreational trail near the nature center, then returned on the recreational trail in Tipp City Park, ending back on 3rd Street.
“It’s a good route for a first time,” Fowle said. “It’s a pretty simple route; nice and flat, not a lot of hills.”
The resource fair featured informational booths from a variety of local government and non-profit organizations, including the Tri-County Board of Recovery and Mental Health, Miami County Veterans Services, the Dayton VA and Operation Caregiver Support, among others.
Sponsors for the event included American Legion Post 586, Post 586 Auxiliary, David and Carol Cobb, Torrence Medical Fund, Paul and Tracy Amidon, the Dayton Foundation, Thrivent Financial-Matt Bueher, Englewood Truck Towing & Recovery, and Erwin Chrysler. Additional sponsors included Accelerated Screen Printing, DM Concrete, the Downtown Tipp City Partnership, American Legion Post 120- Urbana, American Legion Post 5, and Cruise Planners- Mike Brenner.
This year is the first time the American Legion has hosted the Be the One 5K Run/Walk, Fowle said.
“It’s to draw awareness to the efforts for suicide prevention, especially in the veteran community, and it’s to draw awareness to what our American Legion does in the community,” he said. “Those are the two main points of it.”
Located at 377 North 3rd Street, Post 586 also hosts a variety of ongoing weekly events, which can be found online at www.alpost586.org.
“We do a lot of posting on Facebook as well,” Fowle said. “We’re always doing events at our post, the upcoming purse auction for charity and things like that, and we’ll probably do something for America 250 over the summer; we haven’t decided yet.”
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