Van Man
My fellow Bryson Line through-walker, Alex Eichhorn keeps bugging me to write a blog post with my story. He’s right, stories are good, but sometimes I like to forget about “lung cancer survivor walks for charity”. At least the lung cancer part. Instead, I’d like to write about Van Man, AKA Jeff Hedges, Walk the Bryson Line’s head of logistics.
Way before I met and married Jeff, he went to a secondary school in America called Philips Academy, Andover. I bring this up because Andover’s motto, Non-Sibi, or ‘not for self’, is taken very seriously by the school – and its graduates. I didn’t know it when I married him, but Jeff is the living embodiment of ‘not for self’’. He has been the head of logistics for family Hedges for over 40 years. It’s a bit of a thankless job but it would never enter his head that it wasn’t his responsibility to be responsible for others. Andover, you did a great job.
That is why he volunteered (crazy man that he is) to handle logistics for Walk the Bryson Line. Talk about thankless. We walkers get the glory, Van Man worries about packed lunches. And he does worry. There are thousands of details, reservations, t-shirt sizes, pick-ups, drop-offs and on and on and on.
Sometimes he grumbles – you would too if you saw his ‘to do’ list – but as one of our son’s said to me, “Mom, when you are on the trail, don’t forget to blog the POV of Van Man. He’s great and pretty hilarious” He is, and I will.
– Kate Hedges
You can support Jeff in his noble but thankless endeavor by making a donation here