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Moral Uplifting

Frewsburg Native To Bike For Veteran Suicide Prevention

Michelle Greene will bike nearly 1,300 miles to raise thousands of dollars for veteran suicide awareness and prevention. The 27-year-old Frewsburg native started her monthlong trip in Buffalo Friday. Submitted photo

If all goes according to plan, Michelle Greene will have traveled nearly 1,300 miles by bicycle and raised thousands of dollars for veteran suicide awareness and prevention in the process.

On Friday, the 27-year-old Frewsburg native embarked on her monthlong journey from her home in Buffalo to the Keesler Air Force Base in Biloxi, Miss., with the proceeds from her efforts benefiting the national Mission 22 organization aimed at providing services and programming for veterans and families who have been affected by PTSD, depression and suicide.

Greene’s interest in the matter is a personal one, having followed in her uncles’ footsteps and joined the U.S. Air Force upon her graduation from high school in 2008. During her ongoing nine-year military career, Greene said she understands all too well the gravity of PTSD and the immeasurable grief that suicide leaves in its wake.

“Over these past nine years I’ve lost a lot of people that I’ve worked with to suicide, and even more people that I’ve worked with have been affected by it,” she said.

“It’s hard enough to go through that kind of thing, but when I saw the nationwide yearly statistics they were staggering.”

The statistics Greene referenced were those given by Mission 22, which state that an average of 22 veterans are lost to suicide on a daily basis. Extrapolating that out to a year, Greene calculated that 8,030 are lost annually, and more than 72,000 have been lost during her nine years in the military.

“To see those numbers and comprehend just how many more people have been affected by veteran suicide, I felt I didn’t really have any other option but to do this,” Greene said.

An avid cyclist, Greene opted to transport herself by bicycle to Keesler Air Force Base by the beginning of October, when she was originally assigned to return to active duty.

She decided that she would divide up the 1,300-mile trip into 22 symbolic days of cycling, breaking up the trip into four-day segments in which she would bike about 65 miles per day for three days and then take a day of rest.

“I bike regularly and often, but this is the first time I’ve done something like this,” she said. “I probably have about 3,000 miles under my belt this summer, and so I’ve definitely done the mileage already — it’s just that this trip will condense that down to a much shorter amount of time. So this is something new and different; it’s exciting and scary at the same time. But I’m stoked.”

Also, Greene has been raising money for Mission 22 over the past two months via T-shirt sales. After two rounds of sales, she has raised more than $2,100 for the organization, which is receiving 100 percent of her proceeds from this endeavor. She has already achieved her initial goal of $2,000 but said she intends to conduct a third round of T-shirt sales during her ride, and that she will be talking to as many people as she can along the way about her mission and that of Mission 22.

She is also accepting donations via her website at fitinstinctmovement.com, where visitors can also track her progress throughout the month via a live tracker.

While in the Air Force, Greene has completed her undergraduate degree in exercise and sports science from D’Youville College. Her long-time and longterm goal is to earn her Doctorate in physical therapy and to one day own her own gym.

For more information about Greene and her mission, or to make a donation, visit fitinstinctmovement.com or find her on Instagram at the handle @fitinstinctmvmt.

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