'Run, Forrest, Run!' Michigan Man Follows Iconic Movie Character's Steps to Fight Global Poverty

Before Birmingham native Barclay Oudersluys begins law school at the University of California-Berkeley in the fall, he hopes to have run across the country, following approximately the same route Forrest Gump ran in the 1994 blockbuster by the same name. (Screenshot: CrowdRise)

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Who doesn’t love Forrest Gump?

But do you love the slow-witted innocence of the title character in the 1994 cult classic enough to, say, go for a little cross-country run for no particular reason?

Barclay Oudersluys, 23, does.

There’s one big difference. The 2010 graduate of Birmingham’s Seaholm High School is running across country, following approximately the same route fictional as Forrest Gump did in the movie, but for a particular – and a particularly good – reason and purpose:

Oudersluys is following in the footsteps of one of his all-time favorite movie characters to raise money for The Hall STEPS Foundation, a charity founded in 2009 by distance runners Ryan and Sara Hall to fight global poverty and improve health. Donations may be made on CrowdRise, where $1,345 had been raised by Friday afternoon.

Oudersluys is part of a generation that grew up on Forrest Gump quotes – “Mama always said life was like a box of chocolates; you never know what you’re gonna get” – and who helped make “Forrest Gump” one of the 100 top-grossing, and certainly one of the most beloved, movies of all-time.

With simple wisdom, Forrest (Tom Hanks) navigated viewers through the turbulent social and civil unrest of the 1960s, accidentally making history in some extraordinary ways.

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All that offers some context for why Oudersluys, a University of Michigan graduate who will begin studying law at University of California-Berkeley this fall, decided to go for his own little run.

“I don’t really know what made me want to do it,” Oudersluys told the Ann Arbor News/MLive. “ ‘Forrest Gump’ is my favorite movie. And so when I decided to do this run, I looked up the two points where he had gone to and decided then.”

Hometownlife caught up with Oudersluys by phone in Arizona, about 100 miles from Flagstaff and about 400 miles from his May 9 starting point in at the Santa Monica’s Yacht Harbor Pier in California.

He thinks the 3,200 run will end in mid-August at the Marshall Point Lighthouse in Maine, just as Forrest’s did.

(Unclear is whether, once he gets to another ocean, he will “just turn back” and “keep right on going,” as Forrest did in the movie before he declared – after three years, two months, 14 days and 16 hours of running – “I’m pretty tired.”)

Carly Lasagna, of Brighton, is driving a support vehicle loaded with snacks and sleeping bags. They sleep in the van, and meet up every 10 miles or so for water bottle refills and snacks.

Oudersluys said the idea for the cross-country job came to him during a run.

“I was at the University of Michigan and I was on a run there one day, bored, and I tried to come up with something big to do and decided to run across the country,” he said in a phone interview with Hometownlife.com. “I’m out here just having fun.”

And, he said, it wouldn’t be terrible if Tom Hanks found out about his Forrest Gump run, which Oudersluys tweets about his @ProjectGump Twitter account.

“I’m hoping he’ll see something,” Oudersluys told Hometownlife. That would be cool.”