Family-friendly Memorial Day Ruck March honors Green Berets
(COLORADO SPRINGS) — It's almost time for the Special Forces Foundation's Annual Memorial Day Ruck March, which honors the fallen and pays tribute to the service and sacrifice of Green Berets.
Katie Matzke, Chief Programs Officer for the Special Forces Foundation, joined FOX21 Morning News on Friday, May 2, to talk about the event and how it will be a fun time for the whole family.
'We have live bands starting at 10 a.m.,' said Matzke. 'I have food trucks that will be there, and then I have some different vendors like permanent jewelry. Phil Long Ford will be there with the Humane Society, so there will be dogs to pet. There will be motorcycles to see, so lots of things.'
The march takes place on Saturday, May 17, at America the Beautiful Park in Colorado Springs.
All are welcome, and there are 5K, 10K, and 30K route options. Participants are asked to bring dry goods or canned food, which will be donated to veterans facing homelessness in Colorado Springs. 'It's a ruck or run, so if you don't want to carry weight on your back, you can just come and run the event,' said Matzke.
Pre-registration is requested but not required. Details can be found on the Special Forces Foundation's website above.
The Special Forces Foundation is a nonprofit that serves U.S. Army Special Forces and their families, as well as Gold Star Families in a multitude of ways.
Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
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I definitely saw him on multiple occasions doing stuff like that. 'And then you get into contact with the enemy, and see him rear up and return fire, and then, come back to us, and we're fighting side by side.' He added, 'It's a story of a teammate that I definitely would have gone side by side with at the gates of hell.' Hoffman says he and Waziri shared a mindset. 'Which is, we are strong, we are trained, we are absolutely capable of destroying the enemy,' he said. 'But at the same time, we are calm, and we're able to see a situation and draw back and escalate or deescalate as needed.' That was Waziri. 'He was all about bringing peace to a situation, if he could.' In the meantime, Khan and Gul brought their brother's widow and children to Florida. 'My brother's wife, she's like, 'My husband was not a person to hurt anybody. My husband was always trying to save other people's lives,'' Khan told the Daily Beast. 'She was talking the whole night and day about that, and now she's panicking and doesn't know where she is. But then we spray water on her face… and then, she gets better.' The 9-month-old is too young to even remember her father, but the 4-year-old keeps asking for him. 'She's always asking, 'Where is he? When is he coming?'' Khan told the Daily Beast at the start of last week. 'And I'm like, 'He's in work. He's coming. He's doing (his) job right now.'' The family decided to hold off telling the girl the truth, partly because that would include telling her that, so far, nothing has happened to the man who shot her father. She had become only more insistent on Wednesday. 'She said, 'Tell my father to take me back to Texas,'' he reported. 'And I'm like, 'OK.'' He told the Daily Beast that he felt the time was nearing when he would have to tell her the truth. 'I will just say, 'He's not coming to you anymore, he is not with us anymore,'' Khan said. 'Maybe that's all I can say to her.' 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Khawaja told the Daily Beast that he had heard that the district attorney will turn the matter over to the grand jury and let it decide whether the gunman should be charged. He said that the witness from the second-floor balcony had become so frightened after the gunman remained at liberty despite her account that she had left the country. But the police have her statement, and when Khawaja spoke to her, she told him she would still be willing to testify. 'I don't know what the mechanics of that look like in terms of getting her back over here,' he said. Khawaja added that there was supposedly a second witness who had been smoking a cigarette nearby at the time of the shooting, but he had apparently not come forward. He had likely also seen the police handcuff and immediately release the gunman. In the weeks since the shooting, Hoffman and other Green Berets have issued calls for justice. Reports of the shooting appeared in various news outlets, including local TV stations, the Daily Mail, People, the New York Post, and then in greater detail by NBC News. Shireen Connor wrote an impassioned letter to Houston Mayor John Whitmire describing Waziri's selfless courage. 'Always helping other people in the face of significant personal peril,' she wrote. 'How do you define a human being like this?' Whatever the authorities do or do not do, the 4-year-old daughter of that magnificent human will never see her daddy again.
