“Wow, the bright red face really makes my blue eyes pop.”
The subject of the sort-of joke, which landed better than my assertion that I’d whipped my Mickey Mouse baseball cap around backwards to be more streamlined as the finish line approached, was an iPhone photo of four Greenes after Jordan’s Run in Sag Harbor. It shows three fresh-faced kids, 17 to 22, and one parent looking freshly boiled, or having barely survived a 58-year-old’s cardiac stress test, as my mother-in-law put it.
Still, it was semi-impressive, slogging through a 5K at all after 10 months of almost completely sedentary living, with preparation for the race amounting to a couple of slow two-mile jogs at Long Beach this month and one long stint on the treadmill in our cool basement during another now-more-than-ever heat wave. (I lost track of time while streaming on a Kindle Fire, possibly the only way to make the spinning mat bearable.)
I thought I had muscle memory on my side, in other words. But no, it’s not the way to do it. And yet Jordan’s is always worth it, from the vets to the bikers to the bagpipes on the bridge.
Apologies if you think you already know the story of Lance Cpl. Jordan Haerter’s Navy Cross-earning self-sacrifice, it’s just that hearing it again with fresh ears pre-race you could be forgiven for noting in particular the references to diversity and integration in the 2010 remarks by the general who uncovered the heroism in the first place, John Kelly — yes, the guy who went on to serve as chief of staff in Trump’s first term.
Haerter’s brother in arms, Jonathan Yale, “was a dirt-poor mixed-race kid from Virginia, with a wife, a mother, and a sister, who all lived with him and he supported. He did this on a yearly salary of less than $23,000. Haerter, on the other hand, was a middle-class white kid from Long Island. They were from two completely different worlds. Had they not joined the Marines, they would never have met each other, or understood that multiple Americas exist simultaneously, depending on one’s race, ethnicity, religious affiliation, education level, economic status, or where you might have been born.”
Then, together in Ramadi in 2008, they lit up a suicide bomber’s oncoming explosives-laden truck, emptying their clips, blowing out the windshield, killing the driver, and saving 50 Marines and 100 Iraqis in the barracks behind them when the truck blew up before reaching its target. Everyone else anywhere nearby ran for cover.
The six-second countdown of their actions remains incredible, and never fails to be moving.
The recitation of General Kelly’s comments stays with you. You might even find yourself wondering why he was the one to step away from public life, and not someone else.
The organizers outdid themselves with the 2025 complimentary T-shirt.