Veterans return from walk to Los Angeles
620 WTMJ News
By Jesse Ritka
CREATED FEB. 11, 2014
MILWAUKEE - It was a journey that began 5 months ago at the Milwaukee County War Memorial.
Veterans Anthony Anderson and Tom Voss set out on a walk that would take them more than 2,000 miles to Los Angeles to support and raise money for Dryhootch, a non-profit organization dedicated to helping veterans return to civilian life after war and with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
153 days, ten pairs of shoes, and seven states later, Voss and Anderson have returned home to Wisconsin. “We were just two bearded idiots with some laptops and maps and we made our way from Milwaukee to LA,” Anderson says.
Despite being often mistaken for brothers with impressive beards, Anthony and Tom didn’t even know each other until they met at Dryhootch after returning home. “Neither of us really had any time to decompress after our deployments so the beginning idea was to take the time to work on yourself, better yourself by walking,” Voss explained.
Walking provided the time to decompress emotionally but physically, pain became a problem. Especially in the first half of the trek Voss adds, “Iowa and into Nebraska we had some pretty bad blisters going on so there was some painful days in the beginning but we came around." Anderson admits he was mentally prepared in the beginning but the toll the walk was taking on his body was wearing on him, “You start to question whether or not your body's going to be able to deal with the rigors of it and people start to reach out to you and start saying you've gone 400 miles so far, this is amazing.”
Support came in all forms Voss details, “We had a farm dog walk with us for about 20 miles. This dog decided to walk with us, it led the way for 20 miles and we gave it water and food when we would take a break. Turns out the that owner of that dog has a daughter who's married to a veteran with PTSD so we thought it was kind of interesting that that happened.
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