CELINA – When Celina man Rod Carpenter begins a Kiawah Island marathon in South Carolina on Dec. 8, 2018, each mile will raise funds for three local charities.
This is the third marathon that Carpenter is running to raise funds for charity.
Carpenter and his wife Barb say this year they chose two major and one minor charities for their cause this year. The major charities are The Matthew 25 Project, a Grand Lake United Methodist Church mission group, and the Lima Area Agency on Aging, which serves seven counties, including Mercer and Auglaize counties. The minor charity is Project Everybody Beautiful.
Their fund-raising goal is $20,000 and Carpenter said he and his wife will match 15 percent up to $20,000 for each major charity and 10 percent up to $20,000 to the minor one.
The story about how Carpenter began this type of charity drive began in the early 1980’s.
“I was enamored with the Olympics and started running,” he said.
Carpenter ended up running nine marathons starting in 1982 but an arthritic knee stopped him from competing in 1987.
In 2006, Carpenter said he received a total knee replacement but by 2013 he missed running. He asked his doctor if he could run again.
“My doctor said ‘why not’ although he warned me that kind of activity might take five years off my new knee,” he said.
“So after 26 years of no running,” Carpenter said, “I gradually began increasing my miles and endurance.” “But,” he said, “I wondered why at my age that God gave me back my running.”
In 2013, when his sister developed breast cancer, the idea of fundraising with his miles of running came to mind. He joined a fund raising Susan B. Komen event where his sister lives in Eagle Rock, Virginia.
“We only raised a couple hundred dollars,” he said, but the idea began to take root he could pay back for his good health outcome by helping others.
Carpenter said they raised $9,000 in donations for the Bring Maddy Home campaign in 2015. Earlier this year, they ran a Duluth, Minnesota, marathon that benefited the Choosing Life Pregnancy Center and Our Home Family Resource Center.
People who would like more information about this third marathon can look at their Facebook page “Marathon III Running for the Region and Beyond.” Inquiries can also be made by contacting the Carpenters either by email to [email protected] or by calling 419-236-9136.
Checks can be sent to the Carpenter residence at 2203 Eaglebrooke Circle, Celina, OH 45822. Carpenter emphasized that donors’ checks have the name of the charity written on the memo line so that he and his wife Barb know where the money is to be directed.
Carpenter said that he intends to do these fundraising marathons for some time, despite his doctor’s early concerns about wearing out his artificial knee.
“I get an MRI every year, and for some reason, there has been no detectable wear on my knee after 5000 miles of running,” he said.
He feels it may be because he is running for a lot of good causes.
