“If I’m unlucky not to come back, you can be proud of me because I’m doing what’s best for this country, and we have to win this war.” — Sgt. Richard Young, U.S. Marine Corps, in a letter to his parents
When Hal Young was 10 years old, he received news that would upend his world. His dad, Richard Young, who had gone off to fight in the Second World War, would not be returning home.
The boy had trouble believing it. This 31-year-old man who was so well-liked, who never drank or smoked but loved his ice cream, whose favorite word was “wow,” was gone. As Hal Young recently recalled, he just wasn’t “buying into it.”
But still, he would cry himself to sleep at night.
Eight decades would pass before Young would find the closure he needed. And how he found it is the stuff of legend.
The letter
Young’s parents divorced when he was just a baby, and it was decided that he would live with his father while his brother lived with their mother.
Richard Young worked for the Holland Furnace Co. and they moved a few times due to the demands of his employment. Finally, they ended up in Meriden, Connecticut, where they lived with Hal Young’s grandparents.
And that’s where they were after the bombing of Pearl Harbor when his father joined the military and spoke the words his son would never forget.
As Richard Young prepared to leave for boot camp, his son asked: “Dad, why’d you join the Marine Corps?”
His response: “Son, if you’re going to do something in life, you do it with the best.”
The family regularly received letters detailing his journey. He wrote of the 37-hour train ride to Parris Island, his disappointment over not being issued dress blues, how he received a test score of 98.3 out of 100, which he felt was not good enough. He reflected on all the night training they did and wondered why the enemy didn’t fight in the daytime.
To this day, Hal Young still has 55 of his father’s letters.
Those letters stopped coming in 1944. Richard Young of B Company, 1st Battalion, 23rd Marines, 4th Marine Division, was killed on Saipan.
But a Marine who served with him made a point to write to Young’s family detailing the man’s heroism.
“When we hit the beach on June 15, he was wounded,” the letter said. “He refused to get off the island to get the wound taken care of. He went back into battle and was killed saving two other Marines.”
Reading this letter aloud more than 80 years later, Hal Young’s voice cracks.
“May his son grow up to be a great young boy,” the letter continued. “I speak for B Company in saying he was a son, a father, a brother and a Marine that we will all miss. And may his soul rest in peace.”
It was perhaps this letter that prompted Hal Young, at age 90, to walk 80 miles — one for each of the years that had passed since — to honor his father.
The plan
One night, about three or four years after his father’s death, Hal Young awoke, sure that he had heard Richard Young’s voice say, “It’s over,” or something to that effect.
“I knew instantly that I had to stop crying myself to sleep,” he said. “I had to get my act together. … I knew he was telling me: ‘Get off your rear end; it’s time to realize I’m not coming back.’”
Hal Young went on to serve in the U.S. Army from 1954 to 1956. He owned a hospital consulting business for 50 years, retiring at age 75. He and wife Joyce ended up in Ponte Vedra Beach, a place Young remembered from playing golf.
He believes he’s heard from his father two times since that first incident. Once, prompting him to immediately go and visit his Uncle Cecil, who died shortly thereafter, and once in February 2024, when the message was simply a number: “80.”
He didn’t immediately connect this to the eight-decade gap between his father’s death and the present, but a series of small coincidences relating to that number or to his father seemed infused with meaning.
That’s when he re-read the letter from the young Marine in 1944.
“I thought: I’ve got to do something,” he said.
At first, he thought he should walk 80 miles on the Appalachian Trail, with his wife following by automobile.
“When he told me, I bit my tongue,” said Joyce Young. “What I wanted to say, I couldn’t. I was like: You’ll be 90 years old when you do this. Are you kidding me?”
She went online to research the trail. It did not look promising. Finally, she spoke to her husband, offering a better idea.
“She said, ‘Tell you what — why don’t you walk, first of all, on flat ground? Then, why don’t you walk where your father walked?” recalled her husband. “I said, ‘That’s it! That’s what we’re going to do.’”
Preparations
Young identified the four sites from his father’s military service where he wanted to do portions of his walk, which when added up would comprise the entire 80 miles. These were: Parris Island in South Carolina; Camp Lejeune in North Carolina; Quantico, Virginia; and, finally, Arlington National Cemetery.
But a person doesn’t just go onto a Marine base and say, “I’m here to walk.” And Joyce Young spent a lot of time trying to make arrangements for Arlington, but that was going nowhere.
Fortunately, Hal Young plays golf with people who have all the right connections. Three of them, in particular, cleared the way for him at all of his stops.
Then, in April 2024, the Youngs traveled to the four sites in preparation for the trek.
But walking 80 miles, even in segments of six to seven miles apiece, would be physically demanding, especially for a nonagenarian. Young knew he needed to train.
On the first day, he walked about eight miles in his neighborhood.
“The next day, I couldn’t get out of bed,” he admitted.
He went for a physical as part of the preparation process and his doctor encouraged him to start with no more than three miles and work his way up. Young went on to train for about five months — and he lost a lot of weight in the process.
“I was 200 and some pounds,” he said. “I’m 175 now. It’s amazing. Just by plain walking!”
The plan was for Young to carry his father’s medals, flag and photo with him in a knapsack. As more people learned about his project, they asked him to take along photos of their own fathers, also veterans. On the backs of these photos would be notes about the men they depict.
Young ended up taking along photos of 11 of these veterans, including a man who served on Iwo Jima, another who helped liberate the Dachau concentration camp and yet another who was still living at 101 years old — though he died the week prior to the start of Young’s walk.
Beyond that, Young used the occasion to raise funds for the Wounded Warrior Project and the Marine Corps Scholarship Foundation.
Everything prepared, Young started his 80-mile trek on Oct. 22, 2024.
The walk
At Parris Island, the commanding general arranged a full tour for the Youngs, a friend who is a Marine veteran and Joyce Young’s brother. The Marine Band performed at a ceremony where the Colors were raised. Then, the visitors had a surprise.
They entered one of the barracks and found the son of Hal Young’s niece, Patrick Charles Healey. Unbeknownst to the family, he’d recently joined the Marine Corps and had completed The Crucible just four days prior, which meant he was a full-fledged Marine and therefore allowed to interact with family. (The timing was perfect. Had the Youngs arrived two weeks later, they would have missed him as he would have graduated.)
The general released Healey to spend the day with his family.
Young walked about 13 miles there over two days — at the rifle range, the parade grounds and the golf course.
The group went next to North Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, where Joyce Young’s brother lived, and Hal Young walked two or three miles there. And then they traveled up to Camp Lejeune, where Young walked another segment of his trek.
Then, it was on to Quantico, where Young walked about eight or nine miles in a cemetery and on the trails around the nearby National Museum of the Marine Corps.
Finally, the Youngs arrived at Arlington where they held a large ceremony attended by their children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren and other members of both families. When they met at the hotel, the group took over the entire lobby.
Also among the attendees was a surprise dignitary. According to Young, Karen Durham-Aguilera, executive director of the Office of Army Cemeteries, asked if she could sit in for the ceremony.
“She says, ‘Mr. Young, I read everything that happens in the cemetery, but I’ve got to tell you: Nothing like this has ever happened before,’” Young said.
A time to reflect
The walk to honor the memory of Sgt. Richard Young concluded on Nov. 8, 2024, but that wasn’t quite the end of the story.
The week after the Youngs returned to Ponte Vedra Beach, they received a call from the Marines, inviting them to the 249th Marine Corps Birthday Ball in Jacksonville, being celebrated by B Company, 1st Battalion, 23rd Marines. There, on Nov. 16, they made a presentation regarding their trek to about 400 Marines and their families.
Looking back at the journey to honor an American hero and a father, the Youngs recognize how it gave Richard Young’s son the closure he needed.
“It was like 80 years of sadness went ‘Poof’!” said Joyce Young.
“I know it’s given me peace,” added Hal Young, “but it’s given me so much joy the way everybody got together for that weekend.”
When he looks at a photo of his father’s grave site at Arlington, specially preserved by his daughter on a plaque and displayed in his home, Hal Young can only repeat his dad’s favorite word: “Wow.”
A solemn moment passes, and he adds with a laugh and a meaningful glance from his wife, “I figure when I’m 95 I’ll do it again.”
