The Hunter Whitley Butterfly Initiative hosted its third annual Chasing Freedom veteran suicide awareness 5K and celebration Friday and Saturday.
Unlike previous years, the celebration was held Halloween night at The Venue Tuscaloosa and came a day before the 5k on Saturday morning. Families brought children dressed in Halloween costumes to trick-or-treat at the celebration, with tabling from the Butterfly Initiative and live music. Saturday morning, over 120 racers ran in the course, which began and ended near Collins-Riverside Intermediate School in Northport.
The nonprofit was established in December 2023 and is named after UA student veteran Hunter Whitley, who died by suicide in November 2022. The organization focuses on suicide and mental health awareness and support, hosting roundtables, veterans retreats and peer support calls.
Butterfly Initiative director Trey Walker, Whitley’s uncle, said the celebration and 5K were scheduled on Halloween weekend to avoid conflicts with football but that the opportunity posed a chance to do something “brighter” and family friendly on the holiday.
Whitley’s mother, Shannon McDaniel, said Halloween was one of her son’s favorite holidays.
“We didn’t know how bad he was struggling and how bad the transition was for him coming out of the Marine Corps into civilian life and starting school,” McDaniel said. “So it’s just real important for us to get the word out and help as many people as we can.”
According to the 2024 National Veteran Suicide Prevention Annual Report released by the Department of Veterans Affairs, 17.6 veterans died by suicide per day nationally in 2022, and the suicide rate per 100,000 veterans is over twice as high as the rate for the non-veteran adult population. Experts say the transition from military to civilian life is one risk factor for suicide in veterans.
“When you come back home, it’s not the same, because you’re grown now, and you’re not that little boy that left home,” said Charles Bynum, who served 42 years in the Air Force and Air National Guard and attended the event. He added that many people can’t understand what service members experience while away.
Beyond members of Whitley’s family, his high school friends attend the celebration each year to perform as part of the classic and jazz rock cover band Eklectick that plays songs Whitley enjoyed.
Singer Juliana Green said that months after Whitley’s death, she also lost her boyfriend to suicide, which she said was “very traumatic.”
“I’d always had this really immense fear of singing in front of people, but I guess after having your life shaken up a lot, it just kind of pushed me to want to do things I was afraid of,” Green said. She began posting videos to social media of herself singing and was then asked by McDaniel to perform at the first Chasing Freedom 5K celebration.
Several attendees traveled from out of state for the celebration.
Lori Egerter, founder and president of The Tree of Valor, a nonprofit started in North Carolina, also attended the past two Chasing Freedom events. The organization creates Christmas tree tributes with pictures of veterans and members of other groups, like first responders and law enforcement.
The organization began following Halloween 2019, when Egerter’s daughter, Lexi, who has a rare genetic disease that necessitates use of a wheelchair and prevents her from speaking, handed out flags to veterans during Halloween while trick-or-treating.
“I saw how people reacted to that, and I was like, God must want us to do something with this,” Egerter said. Egerter’s family, which had made Christmas tree tributes for veterans beginning in 2018 with a tree honoring family members and friends, then asked to do its first public tribute in Greensboro, North Carolina as part of the city’s Christmas event. The organization now travels to different states for tributes.
Elicia Jones came to the celebration from Georgia to receive her Tree of Valor tribute for her late son, Jake, who served in the Navy for four years before his accidental death in February 2024. She said it felt “great” to see a tribute for her son, whom she described as funny, loved by friends and someone “everyone wanted to work with.”
“I always want people to think of him or any of the lost veterans that are not with us anymore,” Jones said. She added that people speaking with parents who have lost children should share happy memories of them.
“To see a tragedy happen, and then for it to start something, to grow something out of it that is beneficial for a lot of people, I think Hunter would be pretty happy about that,” said Grantland Earle, Eklectick’s piano player and one of Whitley’s friends.
