Ormond Strong Army Wife Walks the Walk

Ormond Strong bridges gap between residents, troops
Daytona News Journal
By Jim Abbott
Published: Friday, July 17, 2015

Debbie Kruck, listens to the National Anthem outside the bait shop at the base of the Granada Bridge on Friday morning. Kruck and others plan to walk every day until the troops come home from war.
News-Journal/JIM TILLER

ORMOND BEACH — It’s early enough that the sun hasn’t yet baked the asphalt on the Granada Bridge when Debbie Kruck rallies her troops.

Dressed in camouflage fatigues, a 60-pound rucksack on her back, Kruck walks the winding boardwalk that leads from Cassen Park to the bridge with a growing band of friends. For more than 110 consecutive days, she has trudged the round-trip over the river to raise awareness for 200 troops from the Ormond Beach area serving in Afghanistan.

Kruck’s husband is among them. Her daily marches began as a solitary coping mechanism.

“We were married four years ago and he was deployed 12 days later,” she said. “That wasn’t a good experience.”

To cope, she donned soldier’s gear and started blazing a daily path — over the river, around Rockefeller Gardens Park and back across the quarter-mile span, arching 65 feet above the Halifax River. Along the way, she started Ormond Strong a nonprofit support group for local troops.
read more here