*(This newsletter is best read and designed to be read at this link.)
RFTW and Central Route, Happy Belated Father’s Day, and Welcome Home. RFTW and Central Route, Happy Belated Father’s Day, and Welcome Home. As I look at the calendar, I can’t believe that it is already 3-weeks since I got home from the 2025 35th Annual Run for the Wall. As I look at the calendar, I can’t believe that it is already 3-weeks since I got home from the 2025 35th Annual Run for the Wall.
(OK… Who has the “Audio Relay” setting turned ON on their GMRS radio!?! Whoever is NOT hearing or reading double, it’s YOU!) ???????? (OK… Who has the “Audio Relay” setting turned ON on their radio!?! Whoever is NOT hearing or reading double, it’s YOU!) ????????
As I reflect back over the this years’ Run, I am flooded with emotions, everything from joy and sadness (at times), and everything in-between. It was wonderful to see old and new faces, and a chance for me to get know many of you better. This Run did not happen by accident. It happens because of the countless volunteers, state coordinators, team & crew leads, and their respective teams. So, State Coordinators, Road Guards, Missing Man Coordinator, Staging Crew, Fuel Crew, Ambassadors, Outreach, Chaplains, Orange Hats, Medical, Last Man & Chase, Hydration, Registration, All Leadership Support (FNG Liaison, Platoon Coordinator, Raffle Rousers, Photographer, Quartermaster), and the volunteers that feed and welcome us into your local communities…. THANK YOU!
I especially would like to single out four personal Thank You’s. Nick Hentges, the 2025 Mentor, and the 2024 RC, thank you for continuing to pester me until I said “yes”. Kim Greeley & Jenny Ward, you morphed into my Chief(s) of Staff on about Day 1. Thank you, thank you. And finally, my Assistant Route Coordinator, Jim McDonough, you were always, always there stepping up. I could not have done this without you. Thank you for helping make 2025 one of the best Run’s we have had.
My goal this year was to make the Run memorable, meaningful, and yes, even fun, as we honored and rode for those that came before us, died and fought for our way of life and our country. It is my hope that it was all of that for you and more — especially for our FNGs.
I’d like to remind all of you that it does really help if you fill-out an After Action Report. There is also a link to it on the Central Route Hub. They have already started to roll-in, and I promise you that Jim and I do read them. Tell us what and who was great, and what and who was not. I have already taken notes from several of them for my final report-out to the BoD.
For many people on the Run, myself included, there is probably a “moment” every RFTW that becomes a personal memorable moment, you know, the kind that hits you that you will never forget. My moment from this years’ Run was Day 3, May 16, 2025. I had pre-arranged with Tom “Bones” Pogue to secretly slot my father, Harlan Olson a Vietnam Veteran, into the Missing Man Formation on the final leg into the Angel Fire Memorial, and he was not to find out until we were to depart from lunch. The problem we encountered was that my dad’s bike was acting up, so he left our first stop in Albuquerque to go straight to an H-D Dealer to see if they could diagnose and fix his mis-firing bike. I sent him a text message informing him that he had enough time to meet us at lunch. I needed this to happen because he still did not know he was slotted for the Missing Man. He ignored it because he was riding and did not know it was me. All he felt was a vibrating phone in his pants pocket. He only pulled over to take a picture of his bike’s odometer turning 100,000 miles. That is when and why he read my text, telling him to make it to the lunch stop. He finally did. When he arrived, I told him to go inside grab something to eat and drink because we were not to depart for a few more minutes. When he went inside, I quickly moved his motorcycle into the Missing Man Slot. When he came back outside, that is when he discovered where his bike was, and where he was going to ride for the final leg of the Day into the Angel Fire Vietnam Memorial. On the ground chalked out were the names of two Vietnam Veterans.
When we got to the Angel Fire Vietnam Veterans Memorial, we all gathered near the Huey Helicopter there, and we laid two memorial bricks for those two KIAs, similarly like we do every Labor Day Weekend, when we lay several hundred at the RFTW Angel Fire Reunion.
Before the bricks were laid, I read this to our riders:
“It was the third inning, and the 2nd Air Division Cobras held a 6-1 lead over the Advisory Group Support Branch in their night game at Pershing Field, the U.S. military’s softball diamond outside Saigon. In the stands, 150 partisan American fans—soldiers, sailors, embassy civilians, wives and children—booed and cheered. Suddenly, two explosions under the stands sent shrapnel slicing through the planking, shearing the leg off a G.I., hurling jagged splinters like missiles into the crowd. Amid the wreckage, two soldiers lay dying, 23 other Americans dazed and injured.
Set off by two stolen, U.S.-made fragmentation bombs buried in the soil, the sabotage was the gravest anti-American terrorist episode in South Viet Nam’s war against the Communist Viet Cong —and an unsettling commentary on the Saigon military regime’s security apparatus, since the U.S. stadium is next door to Vietnamese Joint General Staff headquarters. The incident was also the latest in a fresh wave of terror ism directed at Americans. What I just read was an article from TIME Magazine, February 21, 1964, titled, Bombs in the Ballpark.
SP4 Arthur Wayne Glover was a signal security specialist and PFC Donald R. Taylor a communications center specialist. Both were assigned to the 3rd Radio Research Unit (RRU) at Ton Son Nhut Air Base near Saigon, RVN. On February 9, 1964, Taylor and Glover were at a gathering along with a collection of 150 soldiers, sailors, embassy civilians, spouses, and children when two consecutive explosions hit the area. The bombs, two Claymore mines which detonated under the bleachers at Pershing Field during a softball game, sent a hail of shrapnel flying in all directions, injuring 23 individuals (another source quotes 41 injured) and mortally wounding both Taylor and Glover. It was later determined that the Viet Cong had planted a total of five mines under the bleachers. Military police found three that failed to detonate. Officials estimated that had they detonated, fifty persons would have died. The mines were on a circuit with a pocket watch with an hour hand, suggesting that they were set less than 12 hours earlier. It was later determined that Vietnamese were conspicuously absent from the game that night, and that a Vietnamese kid had told one of his American friends not to play under the bleachers.
What that TIME Magazine article did not say was that my father, Harlan Olson, served with these two men in the Army’s 3rd Radio Research Unit and he was sitting right next to them 30 minutes earlier, before these bombs went off. They begged my dad to stay and finish watching the game with them. However, he left the field to go back to his barracks because he needed and wanted to go a write a letter to my mother, who was a senior in high school at the time back in Decorah, Iowa. My dad would not be here today if he had not gone and wrote that letter to my mom. I would not be here today because this happened on February 9, 1964, and I was born in August of 1968. While I never knew them, these two soldiers are a part of our family, and that is why my family remembers Arthur Wayne Glover and Doanld Taylor. I did not know until I was an adult, that dad had survivors’ guilt for decades. The Run for the Wall motorcycle ride has allowed him heal over these last 18-years. We will never forget them.”
So, Riders, Continue to tell your stories. Continue to tell their stories. Continue to say their names. Continue the Mission. When you do they are never forgotten.
It truly was my honor and privilege to lead you and our Missing Man Formation across this country.
Please also keep the Paul Woerth family in your prayers.
Is it May yet?
Kirk “Pretty Boy” Olson
kirk.olson@rftw.us
RFTW Central Route Coordinator – 2025
Asst. Route Coordinator – 2024
Road Guard Captain – 2023
Asst. Road Guard Captain – 2019
RFTW Board of Directors – 2016-2019
Road Guard 2010-2018
FNG 2009
Due to it being the 35th Annual Run in May 2025, and the 50th Anniversary of the official end of the Vietnam War, we will be having a special “Vietnam Veterans” platoon. This platoon will be made up of Vietnam Veterans ONLY. At registration and check-in make sure that you tell our registration team to put you in this special platoon, if you are a Vietnam veteran, and would like to ride in this platoon. If the US Department of Defense bestowed the Vietnam campaign ribbon to you, you are welcome to request and ride in this platoon.
Due to circumstances beyond our control, Midway Route Photos from previous runs are no longer available. 