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48 hours on the road with Carry The Load and its Memorial Day message

May 25, 2025

WFAA

By: Kevin Reece

“It’s awesome meeting these people and hearing their stories and carrying the load for them. Makes it a little bit lighter,” said Colton Morrow.

When Carry The Load (CTL) finishes its 2025 events at Dallas’ Reverchon Park on Memorial Day, ambassadors for the event will have completed their 13th year of journeys across the United States spreading their message of remembrance in the most effective way they know how: city to city and face to face.

The West Coast route for example, one of five this year criss-crossing the United States, started in late April in Seattle. Volunteers would spend 28 days on the road traveling south to San Diego, east to Las Vegas, and on to Dallas. And as is the CTL custom, the buses are specially wrapped with the Carry The Load insignia, their extensive list of nonprofit partners, and four faces on each side.

One of them is Garrett Willmon’s dad.

“He passed away March 15 of 2018,” Willmon said of his father Randy Willmon, while we sat next to the bus when it parked at Los Angeles National Cemetery.

“He was a man of faith, loved is family,” Willmon added.

Randy Willmon was a Dallas firefighter. He was just 53 years old when he died. Doctors said the cancer that killed him came from exposure to the toxins from his job.

So on that early Friday morning at Los Angeles National Cemetery, with its rows and rows of graves of veterans who served their country, Garrett Willmon led a four-mile march through the cemetery and the Westwood neighborhood of L.A. with his dad’s name secured to a firefighter air tank he carried on his back.

A small crowd followed him carrying their own names and memories, too.

“Letting people hear my story. Letting people hear his story,” Willmon said. “I’m not gonna say it gets easier to tell it. But I want to tell it.”

It’s the way Carry The Load has been telling its message for more than a decade now, with buses also departing from West Point, N.Y., Minneapolis, Minn. and Minot, N.D., all of them converging on Dallas for the Memorial Day weekend.

With stories like the Macias twins.

I met them on a four-mile march from Frank Hotchkin Memorial Training Center near Dodger Stadium to downtown Los Angeles. Diana hiked with a backpack and a tri-fold American flag attached to it in a triangle wooden case. It was the flag given to them after their father’s death.

Watch the segment and read the full story here.

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48 hours on the road with Carry The Load and its Memorial Day message

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