{"id":2491,"date":"2014-06-17T17:21:51","date_gmt":"2014-06-17T23:21:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lastbestnews.com\/site\/?p=2491"},"modified":"2014-06-18T17:18:28","modified_gmt":"2014-06-18T23:18:28","slug":"he-loves-life-not-so-sure-about-the-rain","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/2014\/06\/he-loves-life-not-so-sure-about-the-rain\/","title":{"rendered":"He loves life, not so sure about the rain"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Fugate\"<\/a>

Ed Kemmick\/Last Best News<\/p>

Steve Fugate trudges along in the rain, a little west of Lavina.<\/p><\/div>\n

It was pouring rain Tuesday morning near Slayton Junction, where the railroad bridge crosses over Highway 12, six or seven miles west of Lavina.<\/p>\n

I was coming up on the bridge about 8 a.m. when I saw, through the rain and gray mist, somebody walking along the side of the road, heading east. He was pulling a two-wheeled cart and a sign over his head read, \u201cLove Life.\u201d<\/p>\n

How could I resist? I turned around when it was safe, got out and introduced myself. We didn\u2019t have long to talk \u2014 we were both going places, though I was going a lot faster than he \u2014 but here\u2019s what I learned while he sat in my car for a while.<\/p>\n

His name is Steve Fugate. Originally from Vero Beach, Fla., he has walked across the country six times since 2001, on a one-man crusade to persuade people not to commit suicide.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou don\u2019t have the right to take your own life,\u201d he said. \u201cIt doesn\u2019t belong just to you. It belongs to your loved ones.\u201d<\/p>\n

Fugate said he was hiking the Appalachian Trail when his only son committed suicide in 1999.<\/p>\n

On the day of his son\u2019s funeral, Fugate says on his Facebook page, his daughter flew into a rage and demanded to know why he hadn\u2019t taught his son his love of life. That was the start of it. In 2001, he walked across the country with a \u201cLove Life\u201d sign.<\/p>\n

That year he also lost his daughter, who was suffering from muscular dystrophy, to what was ruled an accidental drug overdose.<\/p>\n

It was horrible to lose the only child he had left, but it propelled him to keep walking, to spread his message, to give other people hope.<\/p>\n

\"Fugate<\/a>

Fugate, momentarily out of the rain.<\/p><\/div>\n

\u201cIf you lose a child and you don\u2019t take your own life and you\u2019re not in an institution, you\u2019re doing all right,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Fugate said he keeps walking because he\u2019d heard on multiple occasions that people who read or heard about his crusade decided not to commit suicide.<\/p>\n

\u201cI didn\u2019t want any other parent to go through the absolute horror I was going through,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s the big picture. The small picture is getting through each day. He spends the night in a motel when he can, but on Monday night he pitched his tent just off Highway 12 near the railroad bridge mentioned above. It started raining as he was pitching the tent and it was still raining when he ran into me Tuesday morning.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is the first time on this walk that I\u2019ve been this drenched,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

He said this was his third time walking through Montana \u2014 as far as he could remember \u2014 and the rain was getting a little too familiar.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s nailed me every time,\u201d he said. \u201cOne time it was a hail storm. Even people who lived there said they\u2019d never seen anything like it.\u201d

\"CapreAir_Variable\"<\/a><\/div><\/div><\/p>\n

When I asked him how old he was, Fugate said, \u201cSixty-eight.\u201d After a slight pause, he added: \u201cI\u2019m 68 today!\u201d Yep, it was his birthday. He knew it was coming, he said, but this was the first time on his birthday he\u2019d thought of it.<\/p>\n

I also asked him how much gear he was carrying. He said it must weigh at least 100 pounds.<\/p>\n

\u201cI won\u2019t weigh it,\u201d he said. \u201cPsychological ploy. I don\u2019t want to know.\u201d<\/p>\n

And though he is \u201cabsolutely committed to no one making a cent off this,\u201d he is sponsored by Danner, the Portland bootmaker.<\/p>\n

\u201cBest company in the world, man,\u201d he said. \u201cThe great thing about wearing \u2019em right now? They don\u2019t leak.\u201d<\/p>\n

Fugate will keep walking. All he asks from you is that you read about his travels on his website<\/a>, and take his message to heart.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It was pouring rain Tuesday morning near Slayton Junction, where the railroad bridge crosses over Highway 12, six or seven miles west of Lavina. I was coming up on the bridge about 8 a.m. when I saw, through the rain and gray mist, somebody walking along the side of the road, heading east. He was […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2492,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[272,832,831],"class_list":["post-2491","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-montana","tag-lavina","tag-love-life","tag-steve-fugate","prominence-top-story"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2491","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2491"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2491\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2492"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2491"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2491"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2491"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}