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Sunday, July 30, 2006
Keeping the Beacon spirit alive in Iraq
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For the second year in a row, Paul Tormey will miss his kids' first day of school. As an Army reservist serving a 14-month tour of duty in Iraq, there's nothing he can do about that. Not every milestone must pass without him, however. Tormey has figured out a way to complete his third Beach to Beacon 10K road race: Get up early next Saturday and run 6.2 miles around Camp Victory in Baghdad, a loop that encircles man-made lakes and the Al Faw Palace, formerly occupied by Saddam Hussein. "I can't really take credit for the idea," Tormey wrote in an e-mail exchange from Iraq. "I have heard about soldiers running here on the day of some race in their own home states, like the Bolder Boulder race in Colorado or the Peachtree 10K in Atlanta." So Tormey figured he'd try it. An assistant vice president for the title sponsor of the race, TD Banknorth, Tormey lives in Orrington and is a member of the Brewer-based Sub5 Track Club. He never ran in high school or college (Maine and the University of Hartford) but realized, upon transferring from the Navy Reserve to the Army Reserve in 1998, that he would need to complete the Army's two-mile fitness test at regular intervals. "So I took up running, kind of casually," he said. "After a while, I found that two miles a couple times a week wasn't much of a workout, so I gradually increased the frequency and distance of my runs. A few years back I started running almost daily at lunchtime with a group of guys from the Bangor Y." His new running companions encouraged him to join them in Sub5, and Tormey began running the local road race circuit. He entered Beach to Beacon in 2003 and loved it. "We all come down, all four of us," said his wife, Hope Tormey. "We stand somewhere along the course, stay in a hotel. . . . We had the type of relationship where, if we had to go to the grocery store, we all went." This year-plus stint is Paul's first tour of duty since he joined the reserves in 1993, and it came only two years after he shifted his status to Individual Ready Reserve, wherein you don't drill and don't get paid but you remain subject to recall. "We just decided it was taking too much time from our family," said Hope, whose son Michael is 8 and daughter Abby is 14. "We were about as non-military as you can get." The surprise recall letter arrived on a Saturday morning in February of 2005. Within a week of Paul and the kids running a Fourth of July road race in Bangor, he reported for training: South Carolina, Virginia and New Jersey. In banking, Tormey works with cash management. In the military, he's a supply sergeant. The Army assigned him to the 415th Military Intelligence Battalion of Louisiana. While he was in training, Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast and many of his colleagues lost homes. "It has been very hard," Hope said, "but at least we have a house and don't have to worry about hurricanes." Because Tormey spends most of his time within the cement walls of Camp Victory - he's responsible for the company's weapons and ammunition - his wife figures he's generally out of harm's way. "Although he does talk about the occasional mortar round that lands on the base and blows up a car," she said. In Cape Elizabeth, runners sometimes slow their pace to soak in the beauty as the course passes Pond Cove. In Baghdad, Tormey will pick it up when he passes sections of the camp where he can see - and be seen by - rooftops of neighboring houses. "The fear is probably overblown, but often I feel like a deer in a hunter's scope," he wrote in the current Sub5 newsletter. "I have achieved many personal speed records along those stretches." Tormey will be in the dark when he starts, because running under a Baghdad sun - the forecast calls for temperatures surpassing 120 degrees - is unbearable. For security reasons, streetlights are not in use, "so I have to take a little extra care on the relatively uneven surfaces around the camp," he said. The Tormeys marked their 10th anniversary in May, apart of course. They hope to be reunited by October. She has sent him homemade strawberry jam, cans of Wyman's blueberries and key chains with lobsters on them. On Saturday, he'll forge one more connection with Maine. Come next August, Paul plans to be back in Cape Elizabeth where a finish line tent shades bottles of spring water instead of soldiers. "It is partly just for the fun of it," he said. "But more seriously, I do want to show some support for the race and the bank. They have been so good to me while I have been over here. " Staff Writer Glenn Jordan can be contacted at 791-6425 or at:
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