That day, for no particular reason, I decided to go for a little run.
So I ran to the end of the road, and when I got there
I thought maybe I'd run to the end of town.
President Carter, suffering from heat exhaustion...
And when I got there,
I thought maybe I'd just run across Greenbow County.
Now, thinking since I'd run this far,
maybe I'd just run across the great state of Alabama.
And that's what I did. I ran clear across Alabama.
No particular reason. I just kept on going.
I ran clear to the ocean.
And when I got there, I figured since I'd gone this far,
might as well turn around, just keep on going.
And when I got to another ocean, I figured since I'd gone this far,
I might as well just turn back and keep right on going.
When I got tired, I slept. When I got hungry, I ate.
When I had to go... you know... I went.
- And so, you just ran. - Yeah.
I'd think a lot about Mama and Bubba and Lieutenant Dan.
But most of all, I thought about Jenny. I thought about her a lot.
For more than two years, a man named Forrest Gump,
a gardener from Greenbow, Alabama, stopping only to sleep,
has been running across America. Charles Cooper reports.
For the fourth time on his journey across America,
Forrest Gump the gardener will cross the Mississippi River again today.
- I'll be damned. Forrest? - Why are you running?
- Are you doing this for world peace? - For the homeless?
- Are you running for women's rights? - The environment?
They couldn't believe somebody would do all that running for no reason.
- Why are you doing this? - I just felt like running.
I just felt like runnin'.
It's you. I can't believe it's really you.
For some reason, what I was doing seemed to make sense to people.
It was like an alarm went off in my head.
I said, "Here's a guy that's got his act together.
"Here's somebody who has the answer." I'll follow you anywhere, Mr Gump.
So I got company.
And after that, I got more company. And then, even more people joined in.
Somebody later told me it gave people hope.
I don't know anything about that,
but some of those people asked me if I could help them out.
I was wondering if you might help me. I'm in the bumper sticker business.
I need a good slogan, and since you've been so inspirational,
I thought you might be able to help me...
Whoa, man! You just ran through a big pile of dog shit!
- It happens. - What, shit?
Sometimes.
And some years later, I heard that that fella did come up
with a bumper sticker slogan and made a lot of money off of it.
Another time, I was running along,
somebody who'd lost all his money in the t-shirt business,
he wanted to put my face on a t-shirt,
but he couldn't draw that well, and he didn't have a camera.
Here, use this one. Nobody likes that colour anyway.
Have a nice day.
Some years later, I found out that that man did come up
with an idea for a t-shirt. He made a lot of money.
Anyway, like I was saying, I had a lot of company.
Mama always said, "Put the past behind you before you can move on."
And I think that's what my running was all about.
I had run for three years, two months, 14 days and 16 hours.
Quiet. Quiet. He's going to say something.
I'm pretty tired.
Think I'll go home now.
Now what are we supposed to do?
And just like that, my runnin' days was over.
So I went home to Alabama.