ST. SIMONS ISLAND | Gabriel Redding was at East Beach on Thursday with three important things after a 2,413-mile run: shade, a 2-liter bottle to swig on and his grandfather.
It was to honor his grandfather, 84-year-old Bill Redding, that Gabriel Redding left Santa Monica, Calif., June 7 on a run to raise funds to benefit the Alzheimer’s Association of America.
Bill Redding sat in a wheelchair with welcoming balloons floating above it and with his wife and Gabriel’s grandmother, Jo, standing behind him.
“I think it’s great,’’ he said of his grandson’s run, “but Gabe has done a lot of great things. Gabe’s a musician. He also tunes pianos. He’s an inventor.”
He is also the fourth of 11 children.
From his home in Nashville, Tenn., Gabriel performs at colleges and military bases and has done a 25-day USO tour for the troops in the Middle East. He performed at stops along the run, said his agent Doretta Osburn, who drove the one-car support across the country.
Hotels along the route were generous with rooms, but they had to camp eight times, Osburn said.
After their tent flooded in Alabama, they tried sleeping in the car, but with the day’s exertion, Gabriel Redding kept cramping through a miserable night, she said.
“Weather troubles,” Osburn said of the trip. “A lot of heat. Then we hit Louisiana and the humidity.”
At the beach with his shoes caked with wet sand, Redding said he couldn’t recall any joy in the camping but that he had battled a lot of heat in sometimes 12-hour days on his feet.
Crossing the mountains in Southern California, New Mexico and Arizona was a little daunting, he said.
“I guess I didn’t think of them so much as mountains. I was born in Seattle, and those are mountains,” he said.
Osburn said the goal was to raise $10,000 and that $7,500 has been contributed so far, but she is hopeful of more.
She said Redding is very philanthropic and has participated in a number of other charity events.
He might have set a Guinness Book record, but it all has to go through verification, she said.
It wasn’t even his first trip across the country. In 2009, he rode his bicycle 3,200 miles to benefit the Multiple Sclerosis Society after a friend was diagnosed with the disease.
The King & Prince Beach Resort on St. Simons hosted a reception for the Reddings on Thursday after the finish.
To learn more about the run, visit the website www.gabrielredding.com[1] . There is a donate button for those who want to give.
Terry Dickson: (912) 264-0405[2]
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