HIGHLAND PARK (WBBM NEWSRADIO) — One month before the anniversary of the parade shooting in which seven people were killed, runners and residents came out for the Highland Park Strong Half Marathon.
Suzie Gray said it was hard, but she ran her first half marathon.
“There’s a lot of inspiration here,” Gray said. “It was a horrible thing, but what came out of it is incredible. It’s this town, and that’s what inspired me.”
Her son is a classmate of Cooper Roberts, one of the survivors of the parade shooting, and Gray said being on the closed downtown streets before the race was a little eerie and reminiscent of the day of shooting. The Highland Park Strong run also featured a 5K and 1-mile event.
Like Gray, Debra Baum was at the 2022 Fourth of July parade.
“It took a lot of courage, I feel, to be out here today in a crowd, in an open area,” said Baum. “I just felt it was so important to be here and show up to talk about gun reform because this just can’t keep happening.”
Baum’s a member of the Highland Park Gun Violence Project. They were at the event along with Moms Demand Action to recruit and advocate for more gun restrictions in other states like those in Illinois.
The race coincided with Wear Orange Weekend, which began in 2015 on what would have been the 18th birthday of Hadiya Pendleton, who was shot and killed in 2013 on a playground in Chicago. According to the Wear Orange website, folks participate in the weekend by wearing orange as a way to honor “the 120 lives cut short and hundreds more wounded by gun violence every day.”
Highland Park Strong Half Marathon organizers said the event also served as a fundraiser for the Highland Park Community Foundation’s fund for victims.
“2023 will mark the first time in more than 65 years [that] there will be no Fourth of July parade in Highland Park,” Baum said in a news release. “We are not free to celebrate our freedom because of guns.”
Organizers wrote that on the actual July 4 holiday, the City is planning to hold “trauma-informed” activities, including a walk to remember the seven people murdered at the parade in 2022 — instead of floats, bands and celebrations. A drone show will be held instead of fireworks.
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