5th Annual Memorial Mile March

Description

Online registration will close at 6am on May 25, but in person/day of registration is welcome!

Donations are accepted but not required (a minimum $20 will earn you a t-shirt!). Enter promo code MMM to register at no charge. This is a FREE, family event. Funds raised will go to support the mission of the Corona Chamber Foundation.

The first 200 registrants will receive a flag to walk with and place in the USA outline on the City Hall lawn.

Click Here for participant release form and make your check in experience quick and easy! Click here for the Facebook event to share!

The Memorial Mile March is an annual walk to honor our military and fallen heroes. Registration is at the Corona Chamber (904 E. 6th St., Corona 92879) and then the walk will proceed around half of the Grand Blvd. loop, ending at the Historic Civic Center (815 W. 6th St., Corona 92882), where participants will place flags in the lawn, in the shape of USA.

During registration, participants will be able to select a flag of a fallen Corona hero to walk with, or write a name of their own hero.

This year's Grand Marshal is Norvall Newhan. Norv was born in 1927 and enlisted in the Navy out of Redlands High at 17. He went through basic training at the San Diego Naval Station and was assigned to the USS Mt. Shasta, an ammunition ship carrying tons of ammo and which at night would re-arm the warships, the first ever to do that, in fact, during a live operation.

"We were a supermarket," Norv says. "We would re-arm the destroyers and other attack ships at night while hoping not to draw interest during the day or the explosion would have been much larger than anything on the Fourth of July."

The Shasta operated largely in the Western Pacific, participating in attacks on the Gilberts, Marianas, PHillipines and ultimately Iwo Jima. Norv was a quartermaster third class and says "I am certainly honored by this recognition but I only caught the last two years of the war. There were many other guys who served longer and under much tougher conditions."
 
After the war Norv was introduced to the oil business by an uncle, who took him to Texas, where his apprenticeship ultimately led to a career as a geologist and travels  throughout the Middle East and both Central and South America. He met Betty, his wife of 44 years in Bogota, which has been his second or more accurately first home for five decades, although he and Betty now live predominately in Ft. Lauderdale. Norv started two highly successful companies in Bogota, a catering business that serviced the oil camps with food and other services and which he recently sold, and a second company that builds environmental equipment designed to remove sewage from the camps, which is still in operation under the direction of his son, Norv Jr., in Colombia, Ecuador and other countries in Central and South America.
 
Norv recently joined other World War II vets in an Honor Flight to Washington D.C. His daughter Cheryl will be flying from her home in Eugene to be on hand for the Corona event.

Light refreshments will be provided at the start of the walk. A shuttle will be provided for those who cannot complete the walk, or would like to ride back to the start line (distance is 1.6 miles each way). This is a FREE event for the whole family. Donations are accepted for the Corona Chamber Foundation, the 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization, who is organizing the walk, but it is 100% optional.

Schedule:

8am - Registration (pre-registration encouraged) - all walkers must sign a waiver

If you'd like to sponsor flags or any of the other costs associated with this event, please contact Chairwoman Jami Merchant at (951) 236-6308.
Click here to view photos from previous events.