Running To Honor Michael

Stephanie Luther, 31, of Newport, is no stranger to athletic competition and the motivations necessary to achieve a goal, for she has been a runner, strongman competitor, and weightlifter for years.

But when she runs the 4.2 mile course across the Newport Pell Bridge Sunday, she will be especially motivated, for she is doing the race in honor of Sgt. Michael Paranzino, the soldier killed in Kandahar, Afghanistan, on Nov. 5, 2010.

“Every time I run, I think of him. I just don't want to forget that he made the ultimate sacrifice for our country.  He is greatly missed,” says Luther, who has many treasured memories of Michael as her younger brother, Zack’s, best friend. “I was the big sister who watched them both grow up,” says Luther, who says at one point she even taught Mike how to lift weights.

“When Mike and Zack were in high school I used to go find them at the Y and work out with them,” says Luther, who is a former nationally ranked strongman competitor in the lightweight female division. She is now a project coordinator for a nonprofit called the American Academy of Addiction Psychiatry, in East Providence, and is also working on a master’s degree in psychology at Rhode Island College.

Both Stephanie and her brother, Zack Luther, 22, can’t think of many times during their upbringing on Bliss Mine Road in Middletown that Michael Paranzino wasn’t part of their lives. “There were a few years there when one of my dresser drawers was filled with his stuff, he spent so much time at our house,” says Zack Luther, who joined his sister Stephanie one recent evening to talk about Stephanie’s decision to do the race in Mike’s honor.

“When Mike was training for the Army he would stop by our house on one of his 18-mile training runs,” recalls Zack. “He was in the best shape of his life before he enlisted,” adds Stephanie. “I knew he would be a good soldier,” says Zack. “He put his everything into whatever he did,” says Stephanie.

With the one-year anniversary of Sgt. Paranzino’s death coming so close to Veterans Day, both Stephanie and Zack this week have been particularly aware of their memories of him, and have found ways to express their grief. They both attended the ceremony last week to dedicate a new building at Naval Station Newport in Michael Paranzino’s name, and they both spent time at the cemetery where he is buried. “When I told Mike’s mother about my plans for the race, she told me that would be a beautiful way to honor him,” says Stephanie.

On Sunday, Stephanie will run the with several friends—and may even have convinced her mother, Ellen Luther, to join her—but she will be thinking of Mike. “At his funeral, there was someone who appeared outside the church holding up a sign saying ‘I will try to be worth dying for’ and that saying has stayed with me,” recalls Stephanie. “So I’m planning to run in a shirt that has that saying painted on it. It’s how I feel about his memory.”