Stonington — After stretching for 45 minutes and eating pasta for breakfast, Fordan Bonardi left his house just before 6:30 a.m. Monday, setting out to complete what has become a Veterans Day ritual.

Dressed in jeans, a red windbreaker with a bright green t-shirt underneath with the words "March for Veterans 26.2" across the front, which he "pulls out of the drawer once a year," compression socks, tennis shoes, and a U.S. Marines Vietnam Veteran hat, the 6-foot, 3-inch Bonardi headed south from his house on Elmridge Road toward Stonington Point.

He would eventually make his way back up to Route 1 and over to Mystic, then up Route 27 to Old Mystic, down River Road to Noank, turning around at Carson's Store, and walking back through downtown Mystic, and onto Route 1 before returning to Stonington. In all he would  walk the length of a 26.2-mile marathon in about nine-and-a-half hours.

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Map of Fordan Bonardi's walking route.

Bonardi got the idea for the Veterans Day walk eight years ago.

"When I was 65, I wanted to do something more than just read about my comrades in the paper on Veterans Day and sacrifice in some manner. When I finish 26 miles of walking, I'll be suffering as they suffer or have suffered," he said.

He started out walking 15 miles. After his son ran the Marine Corps Marathon in Washington, D.C., he decided to "bump it up" to 26 miles, which he's kept up the past six years, changing the route each year.

Bonardi's military service began in 1965 when, sensing that he would be drafted into the military, he enlisted in the Marines, deploying twice, first to Okinawa then to Vietnam.

He worked in logistics, ensuring troops were equipped with supplies such as food and munitions, a "massive" task in Vietnam given there were about 500,000 American soldiers there at the time.

"I actually volunteered to go to Vietnam. A buddy and I after spending 13 months on Okinawa decided we wanted something more. We were young and foolish," he said. "I was 50 feet above the airport and I suddenly felt that I had made a mistake, but it worked out fine."

He served for three years, getting out at the rank at sergeant. After he got out, there were times when he took his Vietnam service off his résumé, given public opinion of the war at the time.

Bonardi said he doesn't talk much about his time in Vietnam, except with those who also served there and who knew what it was like.

"I lived through it and I was able to function when I got home," he said. "There's always survivor guilt that you deal with too, but you do what you have to do."

But he does reflect some on his military service while he walks — "how lucky I was and how close I came to not coming back," he said, and "thinking about all those who did not come back or if they did, they weren't functional in many ways."

While the day was about sacrificing for his fellow veterans, it also holds another kind of significance for Bonardi. On Veterans Day in 1964, Bonardi's father, a welder who hardly ever had a day off work, was able to watch him play football in Stonington's football game against Westerly. Bonardi was voted the best defensive player of the game.

"He was a veteran also and that was the only game he could ever go to, he was always working," Bonardi said.

The 73-year-old Bonardi kept a steady pace, walking about 3 miles per hour, using a 4-iron golf club as a walking stick. He stopped several times to stretch or take a swig of Gatorade from his backpack.

Around the 14-mile point, he took a short break for lunch in the parking lot of Mystic River Boat Launch, eating a sandwich that his wife, Frances, had brought to him, and then there were the occasional bathroom breaks.

Last year, one of his sons joined him, but otherwise he's walked alone.

"This has always been pretty private to me," he said. But he knew after so many years that word would eventually get out (hence a reporter following him around for part of the journey).

He used his Fitbit to track his journey and was discouraged when he reached his planned destination, Stonington Pizza Palace, and it measured his distance at just under 24 miles.

Maybe the golf club interfered with his steps, or he didn't calculate the distance right beforehand. Even though he suspected he had completed what he set out to do, he was determined to read "26.2" across the face of his Fitbit, so he kept going, ultimately stopping about a quarter mile past Anguilla Park.

Sweat beading across his forehead, and dripping from his nose, he said simply, "I can really feel it."

Then he called his wife.

"Hi hon, I'm ready. I'm on South Anguilla Road," he said.

There was a pause.

"Come and get me and I'll explain it to you."

He hung up the phone.

"Oh boy."

j.bergman@theday.com