James Kroeger in mid-2022 had just moved to Atlanta from Minnesota for his new job at Delta Air Lines, and found himself feeling homesick as the Fourth of July approached.
“I was kind of feeling bad because I was missing my family. ... You want to be home in Minnesota with your family on the Fourth,” said Kroeger. It was his first time living outside of his home state for an extended period of time. “I was a pretty lonely guy.”
So Kroeger, then a 25-year-old veteran who served in the Minnesota Army National Guard as an intelligence analyst, decided, “If I’m going to be miserable ... missing my family, I want to make someone else’s day a little better.”
He raised his hand to volunteer at The Atlanta Journal-Constitution Peachtree Road Race with Delta’s veterans employee group. Delta, the official airline of the Peachtree, will have more than 600 employees participating in the race and about 20 volunteering.
On the day of the race in 2022, “I was really nervous,” Kroeger said. “I didn’t know anybody. I was just this awkward kid from the Midwest.”
After arriving at the site, he met Theresa Livingston, a leader of the Delta’s veterans employee group. Livingston, a Delta pilot for nearly 10 years, recently retired from the Air Force Reserves after six years in the Army and 20 years in the Air Force. Of Delta’s roughly 100,000 employees, about 11% are former or active members of the military, including about 2,500 pilots serving in the military.
Livingston welcomed Kroeger to the event, where he was soon handing out water and meeting colleagues while cheering on runners.
Credit: Source: Delta
Credit: Source: Delta
He keenly remembers an experience while volunteering when people rallied around to help a runner who struggled as she approached the final stretch.
“She ultimately collapsed, right in front of us,” Kroeger said. Medical staff and Delta volunteers “rushed in to help her out.”
“She was a little scraped up, but she was determined to keep going,” Kroeger said. “We just started walking with her as far as we could go,” and called for help.
“Seeing people rushing like that and caring for her … it was one of those days your heart was filled,” he said.
For Kroeger, finding moments of belonging are valuable, especially after leaving the military.
“Driving off that base for the last time,” Kroeger said he felt like he was leaving “these people that would do anything for you, they would give their life for you.”
He struggled to find the words to describe the feeling of that void.
“It’s like being untethered,” Kroeger said. “The world feels a little bit more colder.”
Livingston, who welcomed Kroeger that day, said she knows that “when you do leave the service, it’s hard to fit into places when you miss the camaraderie.”
With the veterans employee group and other groups, “There’s places that you can plug yourself in to make it feel a little bit more like the squadron,” Livingston said.
The Peachtree is “so fun and full of energy and high-fives,” she said. “It’s just a lot of fun, and it’s such an Atlanta thing to be a part of.”
The experience inspired Kroeger to get more involved, including volunteering at the Peachtree again in 2023, at Delta’s military lounge at the airport over the holidays — and last month, serving as an escort and caregiver for a World War II veteran on a trip to Normandy for the 80th anniversary of D-Day.
This year, Kroeger gets to spend the Fourth of July with his family again, having just taken a position with Delta in Minnesota as a sales executive.
Other Delta employees will return to the Peachtree to volunteer.
Along with cheering on runners and handing out flags and water, the airline along the fifth mile of the race — which it calls the Delta mile — will highlight a dozen veterans with displays showing their pictures and a description.
“We look for these moments where we have this opportunity to support our veterans,” said Delta Chief Marketing Officer Alicia Tillman. “This race, in particular, holds so much significance.”
