Sanford, Fla.---
“So never think you’re just a kid and what you do doesn’t matter, because it does,” Salil Wilson said to the Victory Track Club. Wilson is speaking to a group of about 25 runners that have gathered at the Veterans’ Memorial Park in Sanford.
“Today we are running from this giant flag pole to the Jeff Triplett Community center with the Track Club,” Wilson said. “To celebrate the fact that there’s far more that unites us than divides us.”
Wilson is the executive director of the Sri Chinmoy Oneness-Home Peace Run. The run takes place in about 100 countries in a typical year, but had to cancel many of 2020’s runs due to the Coronavirus pandemic.
“I thought it was important for me to bring the Peace Run to Sanford to show we are still a united nation,” Fritz Voltaire said.
Voltaire is the head coach and founder of the Victory Track Club which he founded in 2020 to provide an outlet for kids and adults to train and stay active during the pandemic. He reached out to the Peace Run representatives to have Sanford host the first event of 2021.
“We live in one of the greatest nations in the world,” Voltaire said. “By us being able to come together even through something as simple as running, it’s necessary.”
The Victory Track Club includes athletes from up to 20 different nations Voltaire estimated. He was born in Haiti and moved to America as a child.
“Having the opportunity to be someone from Haiti and living in the United States, just promoting the fact that wherever our backgrounds are from we are all one,” Voltaire said.
Throughout the run, the club ran with flags of countries from around the world. They also took turns carrying the Peace Run torch. Sanford Commissioner Kerry Wiggins was one of the last to carry it as the run finished at the Jeff Triplett Community Center.
“People need to be able to know that Sanford is more than some things that are on the negative end that people see and tag Sanford as,” Wiggins said. “We’ve got a lot of great things going on, we’ve got a lot of great people going on.”
After the 1.5 mile run finished, a ceremony was held to honor members of the Victory Track Club and people making a difference in the Sanford community. Two Peace Trees were planted at the community center. One in honor of former Sanford mayor Jeff Triplett who passed away in February of 2021 and had been an advocate for the Peace Run. The second was for Wiggins, who dedicated it to his mother who passed away due to COVID-19 in January.
“My mother raised me,” Wiggins said. “My mother was a 17 year old girl that had her parents to help make me who I am today. And to be able to do that for her… I am who she is. And so with that being said there’s nothing more exciting than to be able to come back and give back and represent while I’m doing what I’m doing for my mother as well.”
The Peace Run will continue on, but Voltaire believes it’s message will remain.
“We live in a time right now that if we promote peace, promote love, promote unity, that I don’t think anyone can defeat us.”