Soldier Ride Returns To Aid Wounded Veterans

Twenty years after Chris Carney, then a bouncer at the Stephen Talkhouse in Amagansett, cycled across the United States to raise money and awareness for soldiers wounded in the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, Soldier Ride, the annual event that benefits the Wounded Warrior Project, will roll on Saturday morning, July 20.

Registration for the ride, which costs $75 for adults and $35 for children, begins at 7 a.m. at the Amagansett Firehouse, followed by an opening ceremony at 8:45. The ride begins at 9 a.m., and will take cyclists to Marine Park in Sag Harbor.

After a rest, cyclists will take a lap through Sag Harbor’s downtown and return to Marine Park, after which they will return to the Amagansett Firehouse. A barbecue lunch there will follow.

Event participants must wear helmets and proper footwear. Overflow parking is at the field at 555 Montauk Highway.

Founded in 2003, the Wounded Warrior Project offers programs, services and events for veterans who incurred a physical or mental injury or illness coincident to their military service on or after September 11, 2001. Their family members and caregivers are also eligible for its programs.

“I was working at the Talkhouse when Peter [Honerkamp, an owner of the bar and live music venue] had a benefit for a local guy on Long Island who got wounded,” Carney told this reporter in 2013. “We raised a little bit of money, but there was overhead.

“After the benefit, we were sitting around late at night, after way too many cocktails,” he said. He had recently participated in a fundraising ride in New York City featuring thousands of cyclists. “I said, ‘What if, instead of having thousands of riders do a short distance, one rider goes thousands of miles, and see if we can get the same type of sponsorship?’

“I thought it was a far-fetched idea that would be laughed at and quickly dismissed. And Peter actually took me up on it. He said, ‘Wait a second — that could work.’ The next thing you know, I was riding my bike across the country.”

This week, Carney looked back on “how far it’s come over the years.” On Saturday, he will participate in another Soldier Ride, this time accompanied by his children. More than 20 years after the terrorist attacks in New York and Washington, D.C., and the start of the wars that followed, “the focus has gone a lot from physical recovery to mental recovery,” he said. “I think that’s the thing where [Wounded Warrior Project] has done great work with it.”

For participating veterans, many of whom lost one or more limbs, Soldier Ride “is as much about getting out and together and being able to help each other as it is a physical challenge for them to overcome,” Carney said.

“The idea of being able to help your buddies keeps them in the game. That’s the perpetuating thing of it: Once you benefit from it, you keep doing it to help the other guys. You see all levels of recovery. So to see some of the guys helping the other guys along — men and women — is pretty cool. You realize that sometimes it’s the ones helping who need it as much as the ones who are receiving help.”