Justin Kuhel was walking on Rt. 265, about 100 miles east of Columbus, when I reached him.
In four days, he had been caught in a hailstorm and suffered blisters on his feet, but meatloaf and at least $700 in donations from passers-by were buoying his spirits.
“There’s been a lot of attention,” he said. “The big flag helps.”
Kuhel, 23, is an ex-Marine from Columbus who set out last week — with a flag flying from a pole stuck in his backpack — to walk more than 400 miles to Arlington National Cemetery near Washington. He has a goal of raising $10,000 for the Wounded Warrior Project, a nonprofit organization that assists injured service members after they return from duty (www.woundedwarriorproject.org).
Kuhel knows he is lucky not to be a wounded warrior. He came under fire in Iraq and Afghanistan while serving two tours with a Marine sniper unit. Some of his friends weren’t as fortunate.
“When I want to complain, I just think about how I have all my hands and feet.”
Kuhel decided in the seventh grade that he wanted to be in the military. He never changed his mind, enlisting after graduation in 2006 from Whetstone High School. His first tour of duty was in Iraq; his second, in Afghanistan. Honorably discharged in 2010, he is studying to become a paramedic.
He began his journey on Friday, leaving his North Side home about 20 minutes late because of all the picture-taking with extended family members. His mother, Nancy, and every aunt on the scene knew it was redundant to tell a man who had survived two tours of combat duty to be careful. But they did anyway.
“This is so much better than any other time we were sending him off,” Nancy said.
A few minutes later, Kuhel was walking east with some ready-to-eat military meals in his backpack. On Saturday, passers-by, attracted by the flag, donated $500 as he plodded along Rt. 40.
“It’s pretty cool. It was St. Paddy’s Day, too, so people were feeling festive, I’m sure.”
He spent that night camped in the yard of a couple who stopped him along the road, heard his story and insisted that he come home with them for dinner. The meatloaf, he said, was delicious.
Sunday was the hailstorm. On Monday, a man pulled up and gave him $120 so he could spend the night in a motel.
The donor turned out to be a former Marine who had been wounded several times in Iraq and was a member of the same unit in which Kuhel later served.
Kuhel was reluctant to take money from the kind of veteran for whom he is walking, but the motel stay was a welcome relief.
“I was hurting real bad (from the blisters),” he said.
By now, he is far enough into eastern Ohio to see the first of the hills that will only grow as he traverses West Virginia. But he isn’t discouraged. This walk is all about uphill climbs.
Joe Blundo is a Dispatch columnist.
jblundo@dispatch.com
* To donate to Justin Kuhel’s Wounded Warrior Project Walk, visit wwpproudsupporter.kintera.org/marchtoarlington.
