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This article was in our local newspaper. I just had to reproduce it.

A personal tragedy in the life of Steve Fugate became a personal mission for the Vero Beach, Fla., resident when he resolved that the seemingly senseless suicide of his son would produce something meaningful.

That product is his "Walk Around America," a coast-to-coast-to-coast trek that is taking him from his home in southern Florida across the country and back again, spreading his message to "Love Life."

Fugate, in Artesia Wednesday on the southwestern leg of his journey, spoke of his son.

"He was 26 years old. He'd never been in trouble in his life. He was a 4.0 student," said Fugate. "Then things started going bad."

The younger Fugate had obtained a job in his chosen field, computer electronics, when the company that had hired him lost a contract and couldn't continue to hire him.

"He let the insurance lapse on his vehicle," said his father. "One night, at a celebration for one of his friends, he was driving and there was an accident. There was a lot of damage and alcohol in his system. He suddenly finds himself with a DUI."

Fugate was eager to find a solution to help his son, who now had thousands of dollars in restitution to pay as well as community service to perform.

By chance he happened to read an article on the Appalachian Trail, the 2,170 mile-long hiking trail that runs from Georgia to Maine.

"I said to him, 'Let's decide.' You run my business take care of your obligations, and I'll hike the trail," said Fugate. "When I get back, you'll hike it."

"We both agreed," he said. "I went and when we talked he said everything was going great.

"Unfortunately, he procrastinated on his community services, and they found him in violation," he said. "Apparently he felt he'd failed.

"I talked to him one day and he said he was fine," said Fugate. "The next day he went down to the beach and ended both our lives with my gun."

Fugate returned to the Appalachian Trail and finished the trek, in the process forcing himself to face his grief.

"When I was out there I came face to face with God, which is to say, in a way, face to face with myself," he said. "When I got back I knew I had to do something. One day when I was on my treadmill something spoke to my heart and said 'I want you to walk across America.'"
The final push, "the straw that broke the camel's back," came for him when a 13-year-old girl in Vero Beach took her own life.

Fugate became determined to spread his message emphasizing the value of human life and the selfish, wasteful nature of suicide.

"I don't want any parents to suffer the hell I've gone through," he said. "And I don't want any young people to miss out on loving life.

"You don't have the right to take your own life," he said. "It doesn't belong solely to you.

"It's a very selfish act, only they don't know they are being selfish," he said. "I'm sure my son had no idea."

When Fugate speaks to schools across the country, he emphasized the unpleasant statistic that suicide is the third leading cause of death in the U.S.

"Don't allow your friends to use the word "suicide", even jokingly," he tells students. "It's not funny. It's not a joke."

As for national statistics, Fugate sees them as being extremely conservative estimates.

"When you look at a little town like Artesia," he noted, "When you see how many suicides there are that people know about, you wonder how many more there are."

Fugate has established Stevie Lee Fugate Foundation to introduce young people to the therapeutic qualities of America's long-distance trails. His goal is to establish camps within easily accessible distances from the country's many hiking trails.

He wants to instill in youngsters the importance of the simple pleasures to be had in activities like hiking and enjoying nature as a counterbalance to the pressures they feel in modern life. Those pressures, he feels, are the catalysts that lead so many young people to take the drastic step of suicide.

He quotes the poet Gibran Kahlil: "The lust for comfort murders the passion of the soul and then walks grinning in the funeral."

"I want to give them back the passion of their soul. I want to introduce them to the therapeutic assets. That's why I'm walking," he said. "I have a tool I wish I didn't have. I have experience.

"Right now I'm doing something I can do. I can walk."

Anyone wishing to learn more about Stevie Lee Fugate Foundation, the elder Fugate's experiences, or anyone wishing to share experiences of their own can contact him at Nocluehomebase@aol.com

Fugate's next stop after Artesia was to be Cloudcroft, proceeding west to Alamogordo, then on to Las Cruces, Lordsburg and points west.

"My itinerary once I left home was pretty simple," he said. "I make one left-hand turn and three rights."

My dad and me saw this guy walking toward Cloudcroft. He has a big sign attached to him that displays over his head. It says simply: "Love Life."

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