campus buzz

There is no 6 a.m. ROTC workout this morning, but J. Brett Anderson (’14)

is up anyway, preparing for a run: He puts on his shoes, grabs his iPod, and sits down with a list of 210 names. He takes a pen and inscribes the ini-tials of seven of those names on his left wrist. After running his first mile, he looks down at his forearm, reads the first set of initials, and says out loud,

“Thank you.” As an ROTC cadet and aspiring pilot, Anderson often visits the Wilkinson Center’s Memorial Hall—a room with a large plaque honoring the names of BYU’s fallen servicemen. “I kept think-ing that I wanted to do something about those names,” he says. In October 2013, the two-time mara-thon racer decided that running a mile for each name before he graduated in April could be his way to honor those

who died serving their country. On his routes throughout Provo, the civil engi-neering student will take with him as many as 15 names at a time. He posts on his blog, 210 Miles: Running to Remem-ber, the names of the soldiers for whom he runs, and, when he can find them, their pictures and stories. A favorite is Billy H. Huish (’37), who was a WWII B-17 navigator. Shot down in 1944 in Germany, Huish parachuted from his bomber, survived the crash, and sought out the Belgian underground resistance movement. Turned in by Nazi collaborators, he and eight other American airmen were executed. “Just to know he didn’t give up—he kept on doing what he could to try to help other people, to try to pro-mote freedom and liberty—is pretty inspiring,” Anderson says. “[When you] remember the deeds

that others have done for [their] fellow men, you grow,” says aerospace studies professor Major Mark A. Slik, one of Anderson’s ROTC instructors. In a Jan. 1 post, Anderson writes that he hopes, down the line, a relative of one of these men may happen upon his blog and see that “somebody, somewhere appreciates his or her loved one.” If that happens, he shares, “it will have all been worth it.”

—Natalie Sandberg Taylor (’14) and Jessica Jarman Reschke (’14)

Running to Remember

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swimminghumanities

evolution to feminism: Common Ground—Different Opinions, coedited by student Justin F. White (BA ’08) and professor James E. Faulconer (BA ’72), explores Latter-day Saint views on con-temporary issues.

super fly: Freshman Lucas A. Aquino (’17) swam the 200 fly in 1:46:54, breaking a 30-year BYU record. The men’s team won the MPSF Championship.

Brett Anderson found a way to remember every fallen soldier on the wall of BYU’s Memorial Hall.

Scan the code or visit magazine.byu.edu/vets to watch Anderson talk about those for whom he runs. Share info about an alum who died in service at honorrunning

.blogspot.com.

20 byu magazine | spring 2014

at the y