Saturday morning the RPM 9/11 5K – the Ryan Patman Means road race – was run here in metro Atlanta. “We decided that we wanted to have something to memorialize him.”

That’s what Alfie Means says of the event that honors his younger brother. This isn’t the first, but now the 10th running of what’s become an annual race of patriotic remembrance to those lost on 9/11, but also honors Staff Sgt. Ryan Means, who died of cancer in 2009.

The 5K also serves to benefit Atlanta’s own Shepherd Center. In particular, the SHARE Military Initiative, which treats post-9/11 active duty and separated servicemembers. “What was being identified as the hidden injuries of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The mild traumatic brain injuries and post-traumatic stress,” Jackie Breitenstein, program manager for SHARE, tells WSB Radio.

SHARE is a program going strong since 2007, having helped more than 600 veterans in that time. Now, 15 vets are in treatment. They get it from a wide range of clinicians and specialists. Says Breitenstein: “Most of them have either personal experience or family members who have had experience in the military. So, you combine the intelligence level, you combine experience they have along with their passion for working with the military.”

Help for veterans now is something Alfie Means is proud that his brother’s memory can help foster. Means tells WSB Radio he and his siblings grew up in Brookhaven and loved to get together to visit one particular place in the neighborhood. “There was an Army-Navy store…in Brookhaven and we all used to go up there and buy used ammunition and fatigues. One of the great memories I have of Ryan and my brothers.”

Alfie says Ryan always wanted to join the military. So much so that he “filled out a recruiting card in Boy’s Life magazine.” Recruiters came calling to the Means home one day back then, only to find Ryan was 10 years old.

He would finally make a trek to the recruiting office years later – pushed to do so in memory of his best friend Adam White, who was killed in one of the World Trade Center towers on 9/11. Ryan Means signed-up…at age 30.

He’d go on to training at Fort Benning in Columbus, Georgia…later Fort Bragg. He’d become a Staff Sgt. before a cancer battle took his life.

“We think about Ryan all the time and what he did and the decisions he made and his service to the country,” says Alfie.

He says now through the Ryan Means 5K, those who run or just contribute to the cause do so for many reasons. “They are moved by either 9/11, being an American, or Ryan’s story, or the Shepherd Center.”

As for the continuing work with veterans through SHARE at Shepherd Center, Breitenstein says those who help them get so much out of the work too. “Our nation’s veterans, they have a passion for protecting our country, for serving their community, and I think that there’s a great deal of gratitude and service that can be given back to them – in whatever way possible.”

See more from Saturday morning’s Ryan Means 5K here.

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