Help Russ raise money

My father, SFC Larry G. Cline, 82nd Airborne, believed your body was a temple and your legs were how you prayed with it. He ran the Boston Marathon in 2013 and crossed the finish line in 3:53, five minutes before the bombs went off. Twenty One years of service, three jobs after, and he never once asked anyone for anything.

At Falmouth he was always in the first wave, gone before I could find him. The years he chose not to run the race himself, he stood at the water stops with a cooler and handed me a Gatorade as I came through gave up his own race to stand on the side of mine. I didn't understand that until now. The photo on this page is one of the last I have of him in his race gear, taken around the Falmouth course.

After he passed, my mother handed me a journal I never knew existed. Red ink, written in parking lots overlooking the ocean. In one entry he thanked God for a day we spent running together. In another he wrote: "We should always rejoice in the Lord." He never told anyone these pages were there.

ALS took his legs first, then his arms, then it came for his voice. His last words to me were "always finish your race." I held his hand on July 12th and prayed him home.

He didn't lose his voice to that disease. He gave it to me, and I'm carrying it across this finish line and every one after it until ALS stops taking fathers from their sons.

This is my first race without him ahead of me, but I can still feel the cooler waiting.

Always rejoice. — L.G.C.