By Kaaren Valenta

Dr Robert Hindes has been running 10k races and half-marathons for years, but the seven miles that he ran at 4 am last Saturday were unlike any others.

Running from Port Chester to Mamaroneck, N.Y., Dr Hindes carried an American flag as he helped to retrace the route that American Flight 11 and United Flight 175 – the two planes that hit the World Trade Center – would have flown from Boston to Los Angeles.

The cross-country run, Flag Across America, was organized by pilots from the airlines as a demonstration of American resolve. Although proceeds from the event will benefit charities in support of the victims of the September 11 tragedy, the run had a deeper significance, particularly for those who participated.

“One of the pilots that I ran with drove down from Utica. It took him several hours just to get there to run,” Dr Hindes, 47, said. “The pilots felt it was important to be represented [in the run] to show that they just wouldn’t be stopped.”

Dr Hindes did not know any of the September 11 victims, and until his wife, Jill, signed him up to run, he had felt more of a spectator than a participant in the events that have unfolded since the disaster. But one morning last week Jill Hindes was watching Good Morning America and saw an interview with the pilots that were organizing Flag Across America. The interview mentioned a website that had been created for the event.

“I went online and signed us up,” Mrs Hindes said. “I said I could run one mile and my husband could run 10 miles. He got a starting time, and I got a message that they had enough runners. I guess they needed runners who could go a longer distance. It turned out that it was better for me to drive in the caravan anyway, because we would not have had a way to get back to our car.”

Dr Hindes, an infectious disease specialist, used to work at Danbury Hospital. Now he is employed by Bristol Meyers Squibb in Farmington as a clinical researcher working on antibiotics, including one that looks promising as an antidote for anthrax.

“The run was Friday night, so I could participate without taking time off from work,” Dr Hindes said. “We were told to show up at a location off I-95 in Stamford and run to Greenwich.”

Mrs Hindes said she later got an email telling them that the run was behind schedule and to show up later.

“We showed up at the appointed time, but no one was there,” Dr Hindes said. Finally we called the police and were told that the runners had already gone through. By this time it was almost 4 am. I only had two hours sleep, it was cold, and I was almost ready to give up. But Jill insisted ‘You are going to do this’.”

To get ahead of the runners, the couple drove to Port Chester where they found two pilots also waiting. Soon the runners appeared.

“When I saw the entourage – a caravan of vehicles with flashing lights and two runners in the middle carrying the flag – I experienced a visceral pride, a feeling like none that I have ever had before,” Dr Hindes said. “The three of us ran out and the runners passed the flag to us.”

Because of the hour, there were only a handful of runners and observers. “The few people who were out at 4 in the morning clapped,” Dr Hindes said. “The police who were there saluted. The side streets were blocked off and we paid no attention to red lights. By the end we had six runners. We ran at a very leisurely pace because we were following a pace car. It was extremely enjoyable.”

The run started in Boston on October 11 and has a goal of arriving in Los Angeles on Veterans Day, November 11. The flag that is being carried was flown over Iraq in the cockpit of a US F-16 in support of Operation Southern Watch on October 2.

“The flag has a history,” Mrs Hindes said. “It was worth getting up at 2 am just to be a part of this event.”

Dr Hindes moved to Newtown in 1994 with his wife and their three children, daughters Jenna, 6, and Shayne, 7, and son, Jesse Soffer, 17, a student at the Gunnery. Originally from New Jersey, Dr Hindes attended medical school at Rutgers, did his residency at the Medical College of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, followed by a fellowship in Boston. He came to Connecticut in 1988 to begin work at Danbury Hospital.

“It was much more than just a run,” Dr Hindes said of his experience last weekend. “What has been happening since September 11 is more of a sense of community rather than patriotism or national interest. On a palpable level, I’ve been able to experience some of that. It was very exciting.”