By Ben Krimmel
Navy veteran Ernie Andrus is running across America for the second time in five years. Andrus is also 95 years old.
“My mom said I actually started running at about 8 months,” Andrus said. “But I didn’t really get into this until I was about 61, and I’ve been running ever since.”
Andrus is once again making the two thousand mile run across the country to raise funds for the Landing Ship, Tank (LST)-325 Memorial.
The USS LST 325 is a World War II-era tank landing ship which docked at Normandy on D-Day. Andrus, who helped return the ship to the US from the Isle of Crete, Greece in 2000, is on a mission to get the restored and operational LST from its dock in Evansville, Indiana to France where it landed troops in June 1944.
The idea to run across the country to raise money and awareness for the LST 325 came after Andrus ran a much shorter journey.
“I did my first 200-mile relay…I got so much attention because nobody my age had run in one of those before,” Andrus told Sports360AZ. “I thought, ‘Gee, if an 88-year old man can get this much attention in a 200-mile relay, how about a 90-year old running coast-to-coast?’ Maybe we could get enough money to get the ship back to Normandy. We had talked about that before.”
Andrus didn't serve on the LST 325, but the LST 124 in the Pacific Theater during the Second World War as a Navy hospital corpsman, pharmacist mate, first class.
Andrus finished his first run across the country, from the Pacific Ocean at Mission Beach, San Diego to the Atlantic Ocean near Brunswick, Georgia, a day before he turned 93 in 2016. He completed the two thousand mile run in 999 hours, 32 minutes and 1 second, but the trek took nearly three years.
Running three days a week, Andrus covers 18 miles each week and hopes to complete the run from Georgia to California before he turns 100.
But Andrus keeps his eye on the prize of getting the last remaining LST of its kind back to Normandy.
“The cost is tremendous, and we haven’t raised near enough money to accomplish this dream,” Andrus said.
For information on Ernie Andrus’s fundraising efforts visit www.coast2coastruns.com and information on LST 325 visit www.lstmemorial.org.
