International Peace Run team enjoys stop at Norwich Free Academy

Norwich ― A dozen runners in the international Peace Run team, joined by members of the local Mohegan Striders, heard cheers and applause as they turned onto the Norwich Free Academy campus Thursday morning, greeted by more than a dozen school staff and supporters.

A Peace Run team member handed the torch to NFA Head of School Nathan Quesnel, who held it high as several members of the NFA cross country team joined the group from their own practice run along city streets.

Minutes later, the entourage moved to the NFA athletic field, where about 60 students in the NFA band and others on campus for various activities and about two dozen teachers and staff greeted the international runners.

Officially named the Sri Chinmoy Oneness-Home Peace Run after its founder, the Peace Run is held in even numbered years. Runners traverse hundreds of countries on all continents.

The dozen Peace Run participants are in the final legs of a four-month tour that took them through all 50 states and three Canadian provinces. Several runners at a time are on the road, one carrying the torch, as others ride in the three colorfully marked escort vehicles.

The relay run made its way from Providence into Connecticut and Norwich Thursday on its way to New Haven and to the tour’s end in New York City on Saturday.

NFA senior Jesse Croteau of Canterbury, a member of the cross-country team, took the torch and escorted the group to the athletic field.

The hour-long visit to NFA gave the runners the chance to explain their mission to students and discuss it more intimately in small groups. They also took in some of NFA’s flavor, watching the band perform two numbers, taking a lap on the track circling the athletic field and then touring the Slater Memorial Museum.

American runner Arpan DeAngelo, who grew up in Hamden and now lives in New York, said Chinmoy, who for years led meditations for peace at the United Nations, started the Peace Run in 1987, with an Olympic-style torch to spread the message of peace. Now, representatives from more than 150 countries are participating. The group visiting Norwich represented 12 different countries.

“I joined Chinmoy’s path of trying to spread peace through friendship, through bettering yourself with your own disciplines,” DeAngelo said.

The runners took turns giving clues to students and asking them to guess their home countries: the United States, New Zealand, Croatia, Slovakia, Cabo Verde, Poland, Latvia, Italy, Macedonia, Austria and even Ukraine and Russia.

“We don’t race, and we don’t run in areas that are really dangerous,” DeAngelo said. “But we visit thousands and thousands of children in schools, officials. It’s just so exciting to be carrying the torch to share it with people so they can share what peace means to them.”

Harita Davies of New Zealand asked the NFA attendees to place their hands over their hearts and close their eyes and think about what peace means to them.

“As we go around the country and around the world with this run,” Davies said, “we don’t feel like we’re coming out to teach anybody anything about peace, but to really give people the opportunity to take a moment to feel that inherent yearning for peace that everyone of us has inside our heart.”

Band members then invited the runners to join them in their own freezy pop run, when they race to the sideline coolers to grab a stick of flavored ice.

“What’s a freezy pop?” one peace runner said.

c.bessette@theday.com