Veteran jogs to aid injured comrades

Veteran jogs to aid injured comrades
By David Rattigan
Globe Correspondent
May 20, 2012

When Nahant’s Tara Butler crosses home plate at Fenway Park on Sunday, her home town can take credit for doing a good thing for area veterans.

Butler plans to be one of 2,000 participants in today’s Run-Walk to Home Base, a fund-raising run/walk to benefit the Red Sox Foundation and Massachusetts General Hospital Home Base Program.

Funds raised will provide clinical care and support services for returning veterans with combat stress or traumatic brain injury and their families. They will also go to research into improving treatments and prevention, and community education. In two years, it has raised approximately $5 million.

Butler is being sponsored by the town, which promoted her cause on its municipal website, mentioned it at public meetings and in the press, and has had residents contribute via fund-raising cans placed around town.

Participants are required to raise a minimum of $1,000, but with town support (and matching funds from her mother’s employer, Verizon), Butler has raised $2,170.

Organizers say that she is the only participant to be town-sponsored.
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