Hundreds of runners are expected at the 15th running of the RPM 9/11 5K outside American Legion Post 140 in Chastain Park this week. The race memorializes Staff Sgt. Ryan Means, a Brookhaven native whose military service began after the September 11 attacks and whose later death from a rare cancer became the reason friends and family created the event.
Means and Adam White grew up together in Buckhead and attended Christ the King School. White worked for Cantor Fitzgerald in the World Trade Center’s North Tower and was killed in the attacks; Cantor Fitzgerald lost 658 employees, the largest loss suffered by any company that day, according to Stroll Magazine and Hoodline.
After spending weeks looking for his friend in New York, Means enlisted in the Army at 31. He completed airborne and Special Forces training and eventually became a staff sergeant, according to CBS Atlanta. During a 2009 deployment to Iraq, he was diagnosed with cholangiocarcinoma, a rare bile-duct cancer. He died at 35 on July 7, 2009, leaving his wife, Heather, and their two daughters.
A memorial race with a clinical mission
The race is more than a remembrance ceremony. Proceeds support the SHARE Military Initiative at Shepherd Center and other donor-funded programs. SHARE provides comprehensive rehabilitation for military veterans, service members and first responders dealing with traumatic brain injuries and mental-health concerns; Shepherd Center says accepted participants receive care at no cost to them.
The program’s history helps explain the race’s focus. Shepherd Center says SHARE launched in 2008 to treat post-9/11 military personnel and later expanded its eligibility to include first responders, rather than limiting care to the population originally targeted at its creation. In fiscal 2022, SHARE provided comprehensive rehabilitation to 90 veterans, service members and first responders, according to Shepherd Center’s annual report.
That figure is a report from one fiscal year, not a measure of the total number of veterans needing care in Georgia or of the race’s impact. It does, however, show the scale of the specialized program the 5K helps sustain. The program was conceived as a response to post-9/11 military needs and now serves a broader group with comparable rehabilitation challenges, according to Shepherd Center.
The wider burden of traumatic brain injury
SHARE’s work sits within a much larger national need. The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs reports that the Defense and Veterans Brain Injury Center recorded nearly 414,000 traumatic brain injuries among U.S. service members worldwide between 2000 and late 2019. More than 185,000 veterans using VA health care had been diagnosed with at least one traumatic brain injury, the VA reports at its traumatic-brain-injury resource.
Those national figures cannot be used to estimate SHARE’s local caseload: they cover different populations, dates and health systems, and traumatic-brain-injury diagnoses do not by themselves describe a person’s need for intensive rehabilitation. They do provide context for why programs combining medical, psychological and family support remain relevant long after deployment.
From personal loss to a continuing local tradition
Heather Means has described the 5K as growing from a small gathering of family friends into an annual community event. Christ the King students, Buckhead Baseball participants, veterans and neighborhood runners have joined the race over the years, according to CBS Atlanta. The American Legion hut at Post 140 was later renamed the Ryan P. Means American Legion Hut, and a Chastain Park bench honors White, according to Patch.
The family’s remembrance has also taken documentary form. Heather Means published Keep On Rockin’ in the Free World in 2012, drawing on her husband’s letters, emails and journals so their daughters could know his story, according to CBS Pittsburgh.
This year’s race therefore connects three separate legacies: White’s death in the September 11 attacks, Means’ subsequent military service and cancer-related death, and the ongoing rehabilitation work supported through SHARE. Registration and donation information is available through the RPM 9/11 Race website.
