 Photo by NORMA JEAN GARGASZ/Tucson Citizen |
Gulf War Marine now
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He figures he can do this first trip in six months, putting 20 to 25 miles a day behind him. But that pace would be counterproductive. "The whole thing is to stop and talk to people and socialize and spread my word," he said yesterday in an interview with the Tucson Citizen. He said he's hoping to be in Washington, D.C., by Inauguration Day: Jan. 20. Plaintive and contagiously positive, he is traversing America in hiking boots just two years after his first and near-fatal attempt ended in southern Arizona. He is in Tucson on his way to El Paso, when he'll turn north to seek cooler latitudes come summer. Standberry says his journey started when he was homeless and living on the streets of Los Angeles. "I liked the freedom," he says today."I liked not having to worry about getting a job." But he also wanted to help other folks get off the street. So he went to church and said, "I give up, God. Whatever you want me to do, I'll do." Weeks later, Standberry says he was given a book by Mildred Norman called "The Peace Pilgrim." "I'm not a big reader but it was the true story of someone who had all the answers that I was looking for," he says. The answer was and is "peace." Norman donned her tunic in 1953 and put 40,000 miles beneath her shoes in America, Canada and Mexico, walking for peace. Already, Standberry walked 500 miles from Sturbridge, Mass., to Washington D.C., in an attempt to deliver a large stone engraved as an offering to honor the unknown civilian victims of war alongside the unknown soldiers, with a group called the Peace Abbey. It didn't work. Only Congress can add to the monument. Standberry says he didn't get angry, because that's not peaceful. And his is not the garden variety of peace defined as the absence of war. No, Standberry wants us all to be at peace with ourselves in order to be at peace with each other. "The only way to achieve world peace is to achieve inner peace," Standberry says. "Don't worry about the end of the world. Worry about the end of your world. Are you ready to leave this world in peace? If not, work toward those things that will get you in the right direction." The end of Standberry's world nearly came March 18, 1998, on a set of train tracks outside Benson, as he was doubling back to Tucson from Lordsburg, N.M., because he forgot books here. An accomplished boxcar hopper and experienced hobo, Standberry was about to jump off a train in southern Arizona. "Being Mr. Impatient, I thought I could jump off before the train stopped," he remembers now with a smidgen of self-chastisement. He was wrong. He slipped under the wheel and his shin was severed from his knee. He still carries photos of the pieces of leg on the operating table. Miraculously, the artery was not cut, or he would have likely bled to death during the hour he lay on the desert floor, wondering if anyone would come. That artery and a nerve were the only things holding the leg together. He figured he was dead. A railroad worker found him and saved his life. A team of doctors at Tucson Medical Center saved his leg, leaving a wide scar wrapping around his calf but not so much as a limp in his gait. He tried to resume the trek five months after his accident but the leg needed more time to heal. "I was given a second chance at life and a chance to do it different than the first 32 years," Standberry said. At 6 feet 3, with a bleached white mohawk and a big hoop earring, Standberry intends to walk without a dime or begging a favor. "I fast until given food, and I walk until given shelter," Standberry said. For the first 10 weeks of 2000 it has worked. He hasn't starved or fallen victim to the elements. When he moves into towns, he looks for a police station and a newspaper. The police will tell him the best way to get where he wants to go by foot, and the newspapers helps him spread his word. "Living off the fat of this land is the easiest thing in the world," Standberry said. "Wherever I seem to go there is something that seems to come to me. And if I don't eat for a day, it won't kill me." Maybe he gets a burger from gang members or a ride in a cop car (he says he's gotten both) but Standberry keeps moving east. "There's a spark of good in everyone," Standberry said. "I've learned not to judge anyone. I let the tunic do the talking." |
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