The Quay County Sun in Tucumcari, N.M., caught up with a Ron Zaleski, who’s walking barefoot across the country — including much of Route 66 — for Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans.
Zaleski is walking across the United States without shoes to gather signatures for a petition calling for mandatory counseling for soldiers heading into and returning from overseas combat. He hopes to gather 1 million signatures and deliver the petition to the president Nov. 11, 2011, Veterans Day and — according to Zaleski — his 60th birthday.
Zaleski’s walk started in June in Massachusetts. Zaleski arrived in Amarillo earlier this month and plans to follow I-40 west to Los Angeles. His wife, Valeria Moran, follows Zaleski in an RV as he walks every day and then the couple stays in the RV at night.
Zaleski, a Long Island, New York native who served as a United States Marine from 1970 until 1972, said he stopped regularly wearing shoes after leaving the Marines to pay tribute to his peers who were killed in the Vietnam War. […]
“When people say ‘I’m sick and tired of hearing about veterans’ issues,’ well, you’re going to hear about them until we start doing something different. We keep doing the same thing, thinking something different’s going to happen,” Zaleski said.
According to Zaleski’s website, his original cross-country path took him down the Blue Ridge Parkway until he realized the admittedly scenic path was too sparsely populated for him to spread his message. He’s now taking the Interstate 40 corridor, which includes Route 66 west of Oklahoma City.
Zaleski is averaging 10 miles a day during his quest. I’m not sure what he will do when the temperature will drop into the teens at some point. Will he keep walking? Or will he simply take a day off until conditions improve?