The ultimate walk for a cure

Not having a car around Richmond can be a nightmare on your feet. Walking to class, work, the grocery store and anywhere else the average college student needs to go can rack up some serious mileage on the toes. But can you imagine walking across the country?

Eric Latham, a Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University mass communications graduate, founded Walk About America in September 2004. Soon after, he made the trek on foot from Nags Head, N.C., to San Francisco over the span of more than 200 days. Latham made $21,923.59 for the American Cancer Society.

“I’ve always wanted to fight for a cause,” Latham said in the prologue of his book, “Take Steps with a Purpose.” “After graduating high school, my dad told me I could get a job or go to college…the choice was easy.

“Four years later, I was sitting in an auditorium at graduation, among hundreds of ‘twenty-somethings’ not like me. I could have been alone. The commencement speaker rapped about the key to success and the future. Truly, for the first time in my life, I was disappointed…I hadn’t really challenged a damn thing as an undergrad at Virginia Tech.”

After a few trips to places around the world, Latham was still starving for more. Volunteering at the Massey Cancer Center here in Richmond, he began to make his 2005 campaign a reality. The inspirational account of his mother’s success over cancer pushed him to make this treacherous voyage.

In his book, Latham gives a full account of every step (and misstep) taken along the way. Despite the positive cause, Latham is honest and frank about the horrible things that can befall one walking alone through the country. He recounts everything, from the Atlantic Ocean nearly taking out his pack out to sea on the first day of the trip to getting a taco hurled at him in Nebraska.

“I wasn’t mad at them because they threw a taco at me but because I was starving. I stared it in the gravel for at least five minutes. They’d sacrificed a perfectly good soft taco supreme to commit a ‘walker hate crime.’ Who throws a soft taco, anyway? They were obviously novice taco-tossers.”

With his blazing yellow “Cancer Research Walker” shirt and various supplies, Latham relied largely on the kindness of strangers he met along the way. His book vividly describes each person with photos and stories of the generosity and companionship that humans can share for a positive cause.

On the book’s Web site, Latham writes, “Every person I met along my life-changing journey is now a part of me. You have left a permanent mark on my life. This is our story. Please share it with everyone.”

Latham’s book is a light yet emotional read, vividly illustrated with photos that he and others took for him during his 3,591-mile walk across the United States. He even includes a breakdown of numbers in an appendix, including most and least miles walked in a day, ticks found, times pulled over by cops and even his weight loss over the time of the trip.

Beyond sharing the who, what, where and why of each journey through each state crossed, it is Latham’s honest emotion that makes the account worth reading.

“The inevitability of spontaneous occurrence was very exciting. I’d get up each day, not knowing exactly what was going to happen or whom I was going to meet.”