'Pacing Parson' walks to help others
<p>Lions Club members Bruce Emig and Charles Quenzer guide blindfolded long-distance walker Don Stevenson through Sandpoint Saturday morning. (Photo by CAMERON RASMUSSON)</p>
SANDPOINT — A long road is ahead for Don Stevenson.
The 76-year-old walking enthusiast and Lions Club associate, also known as the Pacing Parson, has taken extended treks of many thousand miles for years now. His most recent endeavor is just as ambitious — a 1,400-mile trek meant to raise awareness and money for blindness research. Stevenson arrived in Sandpoint Friday night and departed Saturday morning in his journey toward Auburn, Wash.
“What we really want is people to feel good about helping someone who has never seen before to see for the first time,” Stevenson said.
The trek began in Rugby, N.D., the geographical center of North America, on June 11. Since then, he’s walked almost 1,000 miles across North Dakota and Montana to reach Idaho. Stevenson intends to walk into the city hall of Auburn, a suburb south of Seattle, on Sept. 7, completing his trip.
Throughout the several weeks he’s been on the road, Stevenson has encountered very agreeable conditions. The weather has worked to his advantage, and the beauty of the scenery — especially as he progressed west — made for pleasant walking.
“So far, I’ve had sunny weather every day I’ve been out walking,” he said. “There were a few times when it started raining, but I had always stopped for the day by that point.”
That hasn’t always been the case. Stevenson has seen it all in his more than 10 years of extended walks. Throughout that time frame, the Pacing Parson has walked 3,000 miles from Seattle to Portland, Maine, for Alzheimer’s, 4,000 miles from Tijuana, Mexico, to Anchorage, Alaska, for Multiple Sclerosis and 13,000 miles all over the country for the Huntington’s Disease Society of America — just to name a few. In fact, he’s covered more than 40,000 miles for charities since 1998, more than one-and-a-half times the circumference of the earth.
Even more impressive, Stevenson is completing as much of the walk as possible blind-folded. Oftentimes, residents from the various cities he passes through volunteer to guide him through a stretch of town. While in Sandpoint, he received a little assistance from Bruce Emig of the Bonney Lake Lions Club in Washington and Charles Quenzer of the Sandpoint Lions Club flanked Stevenson to ensure he didn’t stumble as he passed through town.
The gesture is an appropriate one, considering Stevenson’s reason for the lengthy journey. The seeds for the trip were planted when his friends James and Patti Premo’s son Nicholas was born blind. However, research in vision-related issues has been advancing in very promising directions over the years.
“Our hope is that one day, research will have advanced enough to the point where this little guy will be able to see for the first time,” Stevenson said.
To assist the cause, place a donation at any Wells Fargo Bank to Account 2553789732: “Lion Heart Walk for the Blind.” Contributions can also be mailed to Bonney Lake Lions Foundation, 18429 89th St. E., Bonney Lake, Wash., 98391. Write all checks to: Bonney Lake Lions Foundation. Put “Blind Walk” on the check’s memo line. Finally, supporters can place contributions online at Stevenson’s website www.thepacingparson.com.