Marvin Lee

Occupation:  Disciple of Jesus Christ; Telephone Man – Retired January 2022 

The most difficult athletic team event in my life was being on the twelve-person crew who helped Team Rotary RAAMs Polio complete the 2016 Race Across America (RAAM), so when Tim Whiteside asked me to crew Team Suicide Prevention in the 2022 Race Across the West (RAW), the rational response would have been “ah no.” But the invitation triggered something else … 

On Sunday June 27th as Team Suicide Prevention are celebrating at the 2021 RAAM finish line in Annapolis, Maryland I was in Tulsa, Oklahoma seated in a circle with twenty others from my Sunday School class preparing to say my joys for the week. My intention was to report the days and hours Team Suicide Prevention took to finish RAAM, but instead, my mind filled with thoughts about their purpose, and memories of my mother and older sister’s suicide overwhelmed me … I left home at age seventeen ashamed of what happened during my childhood and hid intimate parts of me in a vault.

On this Sunday morning, while surround by the trust and love of a Sunday School class, God called me out of denial to face how suicide was affecting me today. As I wept, emotions hidden long ago rose to the surface and a painful part of my past subsided.

Team Suicide Prevention will ride over 200+ miles a week in all kinds of foul weather and stress in preparation for the 930-mile Race Across the West event. They ride not to win a prize that will fade away (1 Cor 9:25) but to spread hope to the one in four adults suffering alone and in silence. They will ride for me.

Marvin Lee

2022 RAW Team Suicide Prevention - Crew Chief