Dauphin County Edition
November 2012
Vol. 14 No. 11
Bearing the Burden to Ease Burdens By Lori Van Ingen What has been called “the strangest sporting event” is just another way for Camp Hill resident Steve Jones to help ease the burdens of local families. Jones will be powerwalking with hundreds of pounds of weights to the top of Roundtop Mountain in Lewisberry on Nov. 3 to benefit a girl with leukemia. People who have come to watch his benefit powerwalks over the years often ask, “‘Where’s the hulk?’” Jones said. “They think it’s the spotter.” They are amazed to discover that it is a 5-foot, 9-inch, 200-pound, gray curly-haired man who will be carrying 700 pounds up a mountain, said Jones, who works as a security guard at Holy Spirit Hospital in Camp Hill. Although he bills his benefits as powerwalks, Jones really thinks of himself as an “endurance walker.” He walks with ever-increasing weights until he reaches his goal. “I walk with a squat stand (vertical posts with horizontal bar catchers on each side),” he said. The weights sit on the stand and his crew puts them on his bar. “Six or seven people lift the weight up to my shoulders. Two guys go in front of me so I don’t step in a hole because once you turn your leg (it’s all over),” Jones said. Someone also walks behind him to hold his back up because he leans backward with so much weight on him, he said. New weights are added after he walks as far as he can up the mountain, as much as 100 yards with the lowest weight of 340 pounds at the bottom of please see BURDEN page 22 Endurance walker Steve Jones will shoulder up to 700 pounds as he ascends Roundtop Mountain for the Nov. 3 charity benefit.
Inside:
For Veterans: Art-Making and Transformation page 4
The Best Foods for Older Diabetics page 20