Training starts in October, six months before the early April event. He’s out the door at 5 a.m., wearing long, khaki pants, something on his head, gloves, combat boots. He’s getting his feet ready. Strengthening the muscles, building up calluses. He starts with an empty pack and an eight-mile walk down Old Cheney Road. He slowly builds. He adds miles and weight to the rucksack. Clothing and water bottles. Lead weights. He cross-trains. Swimming, weightlifting, running. If it’s icy, he heads to Madonna Proactive to work out inside. He prefers the fresh air. “Four or five hours on the treadmill is deadly,” he says. In 2014, Driver, his neighbor with the cowbell, started training with him. “I remember thinking, ‘You’re walking a marathon? What’s the big deal?’” Driver said. “Biggest understatement on the planet.” Eventually, they traveled to New Mexico together, competing in their age divisions. Sometimes winning them. He understands the physical challenge of carrying that pack, trudging in those boots through the desert. And he’s in awe of his neighbor, a generation older. “He’s a testament to what a lifetime of physical fitness can do,” Driver said. “And more than anything, he has conditioned his mind to overcome what his body says it can’t do.” In 2019, when Loftis was sidelined by shoulder surgery, Driver went alone, Uncle Max on the back of his pack. Last year, organizers offered a virtual version. It was lonely those first miles, Loftis said. A buddy fromMadonna—77-year-old DickWaller—joined Loftis for the final 12 miles. His wife, Linda, was there to greet Loftis at the end of the march—a personal best time of 5 hours and 46 minutes in the relative ease of the Nebraska plains. “I had the whole day ahead of me.” Uncle Max urges him on. “Max always helps me through the last few miles in New Mexico because they are tough. We’re a team, and knowing he and I are doing it together helps.” It’s hard to explain, he says. The same way it’s hard to describe the memorial march. The temperature in the desert. The pre-dawn cold, followed by oppressive heat. Relentless sun. The terrain, most of it sand, sometimes deep. Steep inclines and treacherous downhills. Fierce winds. The reason that thousands travel to the desert. “After I did that first one inMarch 2013, that’s when Bataan really embedded itself in my brain, and I could appreciate the role Max played in that event.” The march is just a piece of the three-day gathering in New Mexico. There are movies about the war and the death march. Question-and-answer sessions. Survivors from all over the country, fewer and fewer each year. Loftis has met some of them. “They could have been the last handful of people who ever knew my uncle.” It’s a great history lesson, Loftis says. “I’d like to see more people know about it. It’s good for people to remember the sacrifices that people made so we could have the existence we have now.” Driver felt it, too. On the morning of the march, there’s a 30-minute pre-race sendoff. The sun is rising, and the desert is still. Soldiers are standing at attention. A Filipino delegation is there. American soldiers, too. Wounded warriors. Steve Loftis (left) and Pat Driver before the Bataan Memorial Death March in 2016. Loftis convinced his much-younger neighbor to take the challenge with him. I S S U E 3 , 2 0 2 2 18 nebraska cpas
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