Recently, The Northern Light magazine editor, Ill. Bro. PJ Roup, 33°, had a chance to sit down with Brothers Patrick Atkinson, 32°, and Jamie Fields, 32°, of the Valley of Wilmington to talk about their upcoming Revolutionary Run to support the Scottish Rite Masonic Museum & Library.
Patrick, 40, is a vo-tech teacher, restaurateur, real estate investor, and ultramarathon runner. Jamie, 54, is the Operations Excellence Manager for Delaware City Refinery. The two of them met at their Blue Lodge, Jackson Lodge No. 19, in Delaware City, and became fast friends. Patrick will be doing the running, and Jamie will be doing the planning – jobs each is ideally suited for. Their story is one of preparation, perseverance, and providence.
TNL: What is the Revolutionary Run?
Patrick: The Revolutionary Run is a 333-mile journey that will be completed on foot from Wilmington, Delaware, at 818 Market Street, all the way to Lexington, Massachusetts, at the Museum and Library, to bring awareness and raise money for the Scottish Rite Masonic Museum & Library.
TNL: What about the Museum & Library’s mission speaks to you personally?
Patrick: I choose to run to support the museum, because it represents a lot of my values, my upbringing, and my family heritage. My father is Herbert J. Atkinson, 33°, the only current Delaware Emeritus member. The values that shape my father and me are Masonic values: Brotherhood, faith, and belief in one another. Those are values that I was brought up around. And they shaped my family. My biggest inspiration to take on this task is the values and habits that we hold ourselves to, the highest standards of morality that we share with one another.
TNL: Tell me a little bit about ultrarunning and how you got into that.
Patrick: An ultramarathon is technically anything over a full marathon, which is 26.2 miles. And I started to get into that just because I always take on more and more. I did a half-marathon and then went from a half-marathon to a full marathon, and then jumped up to a 50, and just kind of saw different possibilities with being able to go around the country and run beautiful places on foot. And it gives me an opportunity to focus on one thing and just be immersed in nature. And I feel like that’s where the best qualities of me come out.
TNL: What parts of the journey are you looking forward to the most in the 333 miles?
Patrick: So some of the parts that I’m looking forward to the most are being able to run to the different Grand Lodges. [The place] I’m most excited to run is in New Jersey, where Washington took troops on foot to take battle in Princeton, carrying the same values that we carry today.
TNL: What will completing the run mean to you?
Patrick: When we get to the museum in Lexington, it will symbolize the completion of a project where people came on just to support the same beliefs that we have. There’s no sure thing that this is going to get done. There’s hope, there’s planning, there’s practice, there’s preparation. But we’re going to complete it one way or the other because of how much support we have and how much more support is out there.
TNL: Jamie, how did you come to be involved in this project with Patrick?
Jamie: He approached me about being involved in The Revolutionary Run about 18 months ago, and of course, I said yes right away. We worked together for many months trying to plan the route. We’re putting the route together, and we just keep working at it. We’ve taken a trip to start the process of mapping out the route in a vehicle, to verify that what we have on paper is going to work.
TNL: Tell me about the preparation.
Jamie: It’s a tremendous amount of work, but I have the easy job. You know, [Patrick’s] the muscle in this. There’s no question about it. He’s the talent. I’m surfing the internet looking for spots to stop. Planning stops every three-ish miles as we go along this route. Where do we get gas? Where are we sleeping? All that stuff? That’s on me to do because he has one job, and that is to run 333 miles, and that’s enough.
TNL: How does what you see on Google Maps and what you see in the car translate?
Jamie: So we know we’re on the right route when we drive it (or sometimes run it), and Patrick feels confident in what we’re seeing. If we’re seeing a lot of rough terrain, we may look at a different route. He runs on everything. So we’re lucky there. He can run cross-country. He can run on concrete. He can run on blacktop. It doesn’t matter. But we look for the best surfaces for him to run on and the surfaces that have the least amount of obstructions.
TNL: How do you see this run supporting the Museum & Library?
Jamie: I rely on Patrick for that part of it. His motivation is unbelievable. He had this vision from the beginning of raising money for the museum – bringing all the bodies under the Masonic umbrella together to help support this. And that is ultimately the goal.; it’s It’s not a Scottish Rite thing. It’s not a Blue Lodge thing. It’s not a shrine thing. It’s not a York Rite thing. It’s a Masonic event that we want our Brothers and even Sisters from the Eastern Star to get involved with. We would like to see people all along the route who are all connected by that bond.
TNL: So these next question I’m going to ask each of you. Patrick, what does it mean to have Jamie doing this all for you?
Patrick: Jamie is the best man for the job, for planning all this out. He just wants me to run. That’s a good relationship for me. And anyone who just wants me to run, I want to be in that relationship. And the fact that that’s all I have to do, he thinks, is the harder job, but I, I’m really excited to do it.
TNL: Jamie, what is it about Patrick?
Jamie: Patrick is kind of a kid brother, so to speak. Patrick is relatively new in Masonry, and from the moment I met him in lodge, we just developed this bond. And I was intrigued by the ultrarunning thing. To be honest, I think he’s a little crazy., but. He knows I feel that he’s a little crazy, but yet I’m right there with him for the ride. The reason I took this task on? I could sit here and say it’s to raise money for the Masonic Museum and Library, which is an amazing thing, right? It’s preserving our Brothers’ history. It’s going to, at some point, preserve our history. That’s an amazing thing in itself. I could say it’s the camaraderie that we’re going to build with Brothers all along this path. But at the end of the day, the reason I’m doing it is because my Brother asked me to.
Brother Patrick will begin The Revolutionary Run on April 4 in Wilmington, Delaware. He runs to preserve our history. He runs to promote our Fraternity. He runs for us all. If everything goes according to plan, he will arrive in Lexington on April 11. To follow Patrick’s progress or donate to the Revolutionary Run, visit https://run.srmml.org.