From Ontario to D.C.: Run for the Wall honors veterans who paid the ultimate sacrifice

Eric Fort will ride his motorcycle out of the Ontario Convention Center parking lot Tuesday, May 14, in the annual Run for the Wall, carrying with him plenty of gear, and lots of memories.

Fort, a resident of Birmingham, Alabama, will spend 11 days traveling east to Washington, D.C., with fellow riders, while keeping close the thoughts of his father who died in Vietnam and whose remains lie unrecovered many miles in the opposite direction.

The annual motorcycle trek will send about 1,400 riders on one of three routes leaving Tuesday or Wednesday from Ontario with the goal of reaching Washington for Memorial Day weekend. Among the events planned there is the moment in which the riders walk together to the Vietnam Veterans’ Memorial to view the names of those who died in that conflict.

Crossing the country, riders will visit schools, museums, military bases, veterans groups or hospitals. They will share their personal experiences with people along the way, asking them to remember all who have served.

For some riders – many of them Vietnam vets or associated with such a person – the cross-country trip can help to heal some wounds, physical and emotional, and honor those who sacrificed their lives in their country’s service. One of those is Fort’s father, Navy Lt. Eric Brice, who died when his disabled F-4 Phantom crashed into the Tonkin Gulf during a 1968 combat mission.

“My dad is on the wall,” Fort said last week, as he prepared for the trip from Alabama to Ontario. “As children of people whose names are on the wall, we want to move on with our lives but we still want to do justice to our heroes and to their memories.  This whole process helps that.”

Several years ago, Fort stood on a freeway bridge saluting a group of the riders when they rode through Birmingham. “I quickly realized that I needed to do more than just stand on a bridge,” he said. “I was hooked.”

Fort, a Marine Corps veteran, began joining the riders midway across the country and riding on to Washington. For the first time last year, he made the long trek to Ontario for the start of the coast-to-coast ride. This year, he is an assistant route coordinator for Midway route riders who leave a day ahead of other riders because of special events planned at a stop in Cookeville, Tennessee.

This journey helps him honor his father whose death came just before Fort’s birth in 1968.

Lt. Brice’s F-4 had been badly damaged by anti-aircraft fire during a bombing raid on the Ho Chi Minh Trail but managed to reach the ocean. He told Lt. Bill Simmons, his “RIO” (radar intercept officer), to eject, which he did successfully. But the plane went out of control and crashed into the sea before the pilot could get out safely.

The location is known, 20 miles off the coast, but no effort has been made to recover any remains due to the official conclusion the jet disintegrated upon impact. There is also resistance from Vietnam to allow such off-shore searches. In recent years Fort has made regular trips to the federal agency that attempts to recover lost military remains but has not yet generated much interest in searching for his father’s crash site.

“I do know that at least I know where and how he died and that he was not a prisoner,” Fort said. “There are many people whose military members are simply gone, missing without any knowledge of where they died or how it happened.”

The first Run for the Wall was in 1989 by three Vietnam veterans who rode around giving talks and speaking to media members, seeking to raise interest in the thousands of unaccounted-for military personnel of all the nation’s wars.

“It is amazing how far people have come to participate in the ride,” said Carol L. Olmstead of Simi Valley, the California coordinator for the event. “We have people who have shipped their bikes from as far away as Hawaii and the United Kingdom.”

For those wishing to salute the riders from freeway bridges as they depart locally, Fort’s Midway route group leaves Tuesday at 5 a.m., traveling out of town on the 10 Freeway, then north on the 15 to Barstow before heading east, mostly following the 40 Freeway.

On Wednesday at 5 a.m., riders of the Central and Southern routes will depart. The riders on the Central route, via the 15 Freeway and Cajon Pass, will reach Washington, D.C., by way of Colorado, Kansas. and Missouri, while the Southern riders go through Arizona, Texas and Arkansas before reaching the nation’s capital. Ontario police officers will escort the processions of riders on Holt Boulevard to the 10 Freeway entrance each morning.

Two years ago, a fourth route was added – the so-called Sandbox route has riders leaving Washington, D.C. on Sunday of the Memorial Day holiday weekend to go west to visit the Middle East Conflicts Wall in Marseilles, Illinois.

Host for the run locally is the Ontario Elks Lodge, 1150 W. 4th St. Registration for riders will begin there at noon Sunday, May 12, and is open to the public, Elks Trustee Alan Wissing said.

Information: RFTW.US.