Bruce Bair emailed or called his senators every three days for five months straight. When that wasn’t enough, the 73-year-old veteran journeyed from Durham to Washington, D.C — mostly on foot — to deliver constituents’ letters in person.
“I need people to think if that old man can walk that far, ‘I can make a phone call, I can make an email. I can stand on a corner,” he said. “I can paint a sign that somebody can hold. I can do something.’ And from what I can tell, that’s what’s happening.”
Bair, now retired, wasn’t very politically active for most of his life. He couldn’t be during his many years in the military, and the habit stuck. Drafted during the Vietnam War, he spent 25 years as a medic in the U.S. Army, Army Reserve and Naval Reserve before becoming a physician’s assistant.
His apolitical ways changed in November 2024.
“When Trump got elected, I really started despairing about what was going to happen,” he said. “Actually, it turned out to be worse than what I thought.”
In his view, the new Trump administration is threatening American freedoms and mishandling tax dollars.
He couldn’t comprehend borrowing a trillion dollars while cutting funding for initiatives like PEPFAR, a program that combats HIV/AIDS around the world.
“We can’t pay for the HIV medicine for these people in other countries who have been infected with HIV through no fault of their own. We can’t pay for that, so we’re letting them die, and they’re starving, all these kids,” he said, voice low and trembling.
After the election and Trump’s second inauguration, he thought of his grandchildren. He turned to his wife Kim Bair, 67, and said, “We have to do something.”
‘Honk for Democracy’
He discovered Engaged Durhamites for Democracy in February, soon after the daily Substack newsletter and nonpartisan organization was founded by Durham resident Kathryn Pollak. The newsletter has over 1,000 subscribers, and the group organizes numerous protests each week.
Bair came to the group’s Tuesday morning protest on the bridge over N.C. 147 in February. He wasn’t sure how to help or what to write on his sign. “Honk for Democracy,” Pollak suggested. She showed him how to stand where drivers could see him.
“She, like a first grader, took me by the hand,” he said. He started going every Tuesday morning and joined a Friday protest (now happening on Thursdays) outside Whole Foods.
“When you come to protests weekly…we’ve all become family, because we see the same people, sometimes multiple times a week,” Pollak said.
By early April, Bair was attending three protests per week. Still, he wanted to attract more attention than just asking drivers to honk or handing out flyers.
“What’s the biggest, audacious, hairy goal we could set, the two of us?” he asked Kim.
Eventually he decided: “I’m going to do what all the other leaders have done. I’m going to march.”
‘An absolute warrior’
By late April, Bair was preparing to walk from Durham to Washington, D.C. by way of Charlottesville, Virginia. He started asking for letters, in print or emailed, that he could hand-deliver to North Carolina’s two senators when he arrived. He told Pollak his plan at the Tuesday protest. She was amazed — she gave him her letter and asked the Engaged Durhamites community to contribute.
“What a warrior. What an absolute warrior,” she said.
Bruce and Kim Bair have been married for 11 years. When Bruce told Kim his plan, she was quiet at first. But she heard the determination in his voice.
“I do believe in what he’s doing,” she said. “And thus the reason why I supported his journey to D.C., even though it was a very, very hard thing for me, for fear of his safety and being an older gentleman and being out on the road, it did kind of scare me a little — well, scared me a lot, actually.”
Bruce’s son Jacob, 50, was concerned, but he knew his dad could take care of himself. He also knew there was no stopping him.
“My dad is a very intense person, particularly when something is important to him,” he said.
Bair has lived in Durham since 1995. A self-proclaimed “collector of ideas,” he’s an avid reader and likes to journal. He has four children and 10 grandchildren. As a rite of passage, when each kid turns 14, he and Kim take them to D.C.. They stay at the same hotel in Chinatown and bike all over the city.
“I’m just an average guy who knows a little bit about medicine and a lot about being a grandpa,” he said.
The kindness of strangers
Bair set off on June 2, carrying a backpack and duffel bag totalling about 30 pounds. He donned protective goggles, a wide-brimmed fishing hat and a high-visibility vest.
He walked through North Carolina for the first four days, from Durham to Greensboro. While he walked, he carried a multi-colored collage reading “There IS something you can do. Make noise, take up space. Insist, resist, protest.” He gave out flyers asking people to call Sen. Tillis’ office about his impending arrival.
On June 6, his son drove him to Lynchburg, and Bair began to walk through Virginia.
Each day, he woke up around 5 a.m. and ate dried fruits and nuts for breakfast. As soon as the sun rose, he started walking, to log miles before the worst of the late-June heat. He figured he could walk no further than 25 miles in a day, and he planned his stops accordingly. He didn’t pack camping equipment, so he factored in one bus ride between Ruckersville and Culpeper, Virginia, an area with few towns and hotels. Otherwise, he was determined to make the journey on foot.
He wrote to the Virginia state and county Democratic Party chairs, telling them about his trek and asking if they would let him “sleep in their backyard” for a night. Three offered their homes — Kathy Hachey in Lovingston, Nancy Damon in Charlottesville and Max Hall in Warrenton, Virginia. Each gave Bair “wonderful” meals and introduced him to their friends. He stayed in hotels for the other nights of the journey.
Hall, a fellow veteran and Democrat, posted in his blog about Bair’s visit to Warrenton on June 13.
“Some think his superpower is physical stamina. They are wrong. His superpower is that he gives a d@mn,” Hall wrote. “At a personal level, Bruce’s actions inspired me, and I plan to step up my game even more.”
For Bair, kindness from these hosts and other strangers became the best part of his journey. One woman stopped driving during a rainstorm to offer help.
“I was soaked to the bone, and this woman [pulled] up and said, ‘I have soup. Would you like a bowl of soup?’”
Another passerby offered him $50, and others bought him water or joined him for a few miles. “Those are the kind of people that we have in our country,” he said.
Supporters also followed Bair’s journey on Facebook. Laura Paye, a member of Engaged Durhamites for Democracy who runs the Durham Resistance Hub website, posted daily updates about Bair’s walk.
On the second-to-last day, walking from Gainesville to Centreville, Bair hit a 3-mile construction zone. The road was so narrow that he had to turn and lean back against the guardrail so cars could pass without hitting his backpack.
“You had to take your life in your hands,” he said.
When he reached Centreville, he wrote: “Tomorrow is the last long walk. I need to get there, deliver letters and come home to my patient wife, the ED4D team and my garden. My motto when meeting with Tillis’s staff on Tuesday is going to be – Be Like Water. Be a Tsunami, Wash away the political dirt soiling our nation.”
It rained heavily on three different days during Bair’s walk. By the final day, he had switched shoes — his Merrell boots had fallen apart from the rain — and his feet were aching and bleeding from blisters.
‘The postman doesn’t read my mail’
After 15 days and nights on the move, he awoke on June 17 in the Quality Inn hotel in Spring Hill, Virginia, just outside D.C. With a trimmed beard and dry clothes, he took the metro to Union Station.
He had swapped his typical 30 pounds for three white envelopes — two for Sen. Thom Tillis, and one for Sen. Ted Budd. There were 57 total letters and emails for Sen. Tillis, 15 for Sen. Budd and eight for Rep. Valerie Foushee. (The House was in recess, so he plans to deliver Foushee’s letters upon his return to Durham.)
He had printed the final set of emails the day before and sealed them, but he hadn’t read them.
“I just felt like it was private communication. I was the postman. The postman doesn’t read my mail,” he said.
He paused to check his map before climbing the steps to the white stone Dirksen Building. He had never been inside, despite many visits to the nation’s capital. While his mission was to deliver the letters, he was prepared to speak his mind.
“I don’t have the solution,” he said. “I don’t pretend to have the solution. But collectively, we do. We have smart people in this country, smart people.”
Hat in hand, he searched the hallway for number 113. Inside the office filled with North Carolina memorabilia, he was escorted to a small conference room with a dried tobacco leaf framed on the wall.
He had called both senators ahead of his arrival, and Sen. Tillis’ office had arranged for a meeting with chief of staff Shil Patel, national security adviser J.C. Lintzenich and senior adviser Daniel Keylin.
They asked him about the walk — the amount of time it took, the number of miles and steps he covered — before sitting down with him at the conference table.
“I think the fact you made that walk is kind of indicative of our democracy,” Keylin said. “I think it’s symbolic that you feel passionately about the issues, so we’re more than happy to sit down with you and talk through some of the issues that matter to you.”
Bair voiced his concerns about the SAVE Act, a bill that would require Americans to provide proof of citizenship for voter registration, and the “Big Beautiful Bill,” the sweeping budget bill that the Senate is expected to vote on shortly.
Keylin said the office was still analyzing the Senate version of the bill, which they had received the day before. He hinted that the provision to block states from regulating AI for the next 10 years “might find its way out of the bill” for procedural reasons.
Keylin also said the proposed cuts to Medicaid were “a red line” for Sen. Tillis because they would impact provider rates in North Carolina. “The General Assembly doesn’t have the resources to backfill that money, not even close to it,” Keylin said.
He predicted the bill process would stall amid concern from other states, too.
After thanking Tillis’ staff, Bair crossed the street to the Russell Building. Sen. Budd’s office had not answered until that morning, when Bruce had called once again to announce the letter delivery.
In the office, a staffer asked him to open the envelope per office policy. She then accepted the letters and asked if there was anything else Bair needed.
“There’s always a little let down,” he said, walking away from the Russell Building. “Anytime you finish a mission, you celebrate it, and then there’s this little let down until next time. But I really miss my wife, holy mackerel.”
Bair left D.C. the next morning on a train back to Durham, carrying his backpack and duffel bag on much better-rested feet. He planned to write in his journal and read the Senate version of the “Big Beautiful Bill” during the eight-hour ride.
Kim Bair planned to meet him at the station.
“Bruce is dedicated to what he believes in,” Kim Bair said. “As he’s proven, he will walk the miles to make us a better world.”
Above: Bruce Bair stands outside the U.S. Capitol after journeying from Durham to D.C. Photo by Sophie Endrud — The 9th Street Journal
