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When Kenny Mintz left from the Army after 34 years, he knew he could make money. But he was eager to do something more meaningful and challenging.
He decided to walk across the nation he had fought for and meet the American people he had served.
Mintz, 52, also wanted to highlight the 14 soldiers who died in combat under his command of the 1st Battalion, 32nd Infantry Regiment of the 10th Mountain Division during its 2011–2012 tour in the Zhari district in the Kandahar province — which he has described as “the worst of times in the worst of places.”
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The retired full-bird colonel is walking 3,000 miles, from coast to coast, to raise money for veterans’ causes and in honor of his mother, who died in 2020 after a five-year battle with pancreatic cancer. “As I started to contemplate her courage, that inspired me,” Mintz told AARP Veteran Report while walking across Illinois.
Lt. Col. Kenny Mintz near Nalgham, Kandahar Province, Afghanistan, in 2011
Six combat deployments
It was with his mother that Mintz first traveled from Washington, D.C., to Southern California, by car, when he was 4 years old and she was a single mother heading toward a new life. This time, the trip out West, in part a re-creation of that boyhood journey, will take a little longer — nearly seven months.
Mintz is raising money for two veterans’ causes: The Johnny Mac Soldiers Fund, which gives grants to the children of fallen service members; and Operation Resiliency, which organizes reunions for units that served in combat together. Fulfilling one of his mother’s final wishes, he is also seeking funds for the Pancreatic Cancer Action Network.
A West Point graduate from the class of 1991 and father of three daughters and a son — all in their 20s — Mintz served as an Army infantry officer and had six combat deployments: two to Bosnia, one to Iraq and three to Afghanistan.
