Jim Crigler pulled into a Williamsville truck stop on his way home to Minnesota Monday night.
He was finishing the last leg of a long journey.
“I’m just trying to get back,” Crigler said. “I’ve been gone quite some time.”
This summer, Crigler canoed solo down the Mississippi River, a journey cut in two by late-spring flooding. Crigler said the last few miles were some of the most challenging.
“Between Baton Rouge and New Orleans, there was a lot of ship traffic,” Crigler said. “You have to stay out of the current … which makes it harder to paddle or row.”
The most challenging part of the trip, though, was not the paddling but the stops Crigler made along the way. He’d set out to meet with Gold Star families, families who had lost loved ones in the military.
“Can you imagine losing a son or a daughter in service to our country, they give their life, and no one cares?” Crigler asked. “That’s what it seems like. America just goes about oblivious, doing their daily routines, and it doesn’t seem like they care. I wanted to go down that river, talk to America and get recognition for them.”
Crigler remembers meeting his first Gold Star family while he was serving in Vietnam.
“I took my only R and R to escort my roommate, Thomas Francis Shaw, I escorted his body back to his family in Fond du Lac, Wisconsin,” Shaw said. “I’d flown thousands of combat missions in Vietnam, and that was the toughest mission that I think anyone could ever go on.”
During his journey down river, Crigler gave special gold coins to Gold Star families he met.
He also sought to raise money for American Huey 369, an organization that offers flights in Vietnam-era Huey helicopters and is working to build a museum in Indiana.
