Commissioner runs 39.3 miles in Disney World for charity
Call her the caped campaigner.
Washington County Commission Diana Irey Vaughan supported Washington City Mission’s capital campaign, specifically its Patriot House project for homeless veterans, by subjecting her legs to 39.3 miles of pounding the pavement Jan. 6 and 7.
The cape Diana Irey Vaughan will be wearing features patches from veterans’ uniforms.
She ran Goofy’s Race and a Half Challenge – that’s half a marathon Saturday and the full version Sunday – at Disney World in Orlando, Fla., while wearing an “American superheroes” cape, with patches from veterans’ uniforms sewn onto it.
Among them is one from Brandon Rumbaugh, a Uniontown resident who lost both of his legs at age 24 while attempting to aid a fellow Marine who was wounded by stepping on an improvised exploding device in Afghanistan. Rumbaugh frequently gives presentations about his experiences in overcoming adversity.
“He’s my inspiration to do this,” Irey Vaughan said prior to traveling to Florida. “The patch I’m wearing of his, he was wearing when he lost his legs.”
She also has a patch from her husband, Robert Vaughan, who is in his 41st year of serving in the military.
Katie Anderson / Observer-Reporter
Brandon Rumbaugh speaks during an assembly at Waynesburg Central High School.
“That has been a motivation for me, as well, just being so grateful that my husband has come home and he’s been OK,” she said.
The Nottingham Township resident is relatively new to the challenge of running 26.2 miles, having done so for the first time in the 2017 Pittsburgh Marathon.
“It wasn’t anything that was on my bucket list,” she explained. “I wanted to do something creative to raise money for some good organizations.”
She has done so on behalf of the City Mission’s Avis Arbor shelter for women and children by running a 10-kilometer event and half marathon at Disney.
“I then became more and more familiar with the need to help homeless veterans and decided that was a cause that I needed to put my heart and soul into,” Irey Vaughan said, with some commendable wordplay: “You can take the word ‘sole’ either way.”
Diana Irey Vaughan is greeted by a costumed character in Orlando.
But on a serious note:
“We can never repay the debt of gratitude that we owe those who serve in our armed forces,” she observed. “For all that they’ve done and sacrificed for us, we need to give back to them.”
The Patriot House will feature two floors of living space with room for 22 beds and a first-level medical clinic. The budget for the project is $2.7 million.
“The facility will be dedicated strictly to veterans, because it’s a unique situation,” Beatriz Harrison, the mission’s director of marketing and development, said when ground was broken for the facility in 2016. “Their recovery is different. Veterans do much better in an environment when they have that camaraderie they did as troops.”
For more information, visit www.citymission.org.