Westmont Magazine A Wilderness Trek for Westmont Friends

Jeff Magee ’80 and Brad Leeger ’84—with permission from their wives, Kristine Kint Magee ’85 and Lisa Willems Leeger ’83—hiked the High Sierra Trail for nine days in July. They saved their Westmont alumni T-shirts for Day Eight and the trek to Mount Whitney’s summit. Starting the strenuous trail in Sequoia National Park, they followed it to the western side of Mount Whitney, gaining 13,303 feet in elevation and covering 72 miles.

“We passed a number of people on the trail, and they were all younger,” says Jeff, the grandfather of two. “They were doing that trail in five or six days instead of nine. We decided to enjoy the trip, take a lot of breaks, and appreciate the staggering beauty of the wilderness.

“I find backpacking so refreshing and invigorating,” Jeff says. “The quiet makes it much easier to pray.”

“Hiking isn’t complicated,” Brad says. “It gives you a lot of space to focus on other things, such as prayer, the greatness of God and how the creation reflects his character. The creation is such an incredible gift to us.”

The friends, who live in the San Diego area, go backpacking together every few years. “The older I get, the more I appreciate spending nine days with a good friend,” Jeff says. “You need to get along really well with someone to take this kind of trip,” Brad says. “It cements a relationship.”

Jeff, a retired Navy nurse, works as a business manager at Naval Medical Center San Diego.

He spent 25 years in the Naval Reserves as a trauma nurse. He volunteered to go to Iraq twice, but served instead in San Diego. Kristine worked as a nurse until their second child was born and homeschooled all four of their children. She now cares for her mother, who has advanced dementia and requires constant attention. “Her workload increased significantly while I was gone, and I appreciate her support for the trip,” Jeff says.

Brad and Lisa train cross-cultural workers in San Diego after a 20-year career overseas in community development. “We served the poor, promoted agriculture and agroforestry, introduced appropriate technology, taught English— and started a cinnamon-roll business,” Brad says. “Now we train people from a variety of agencies to do the same thing and help them be more resilient.” They have two daughters, one of whom also works in training cross-cultural volunteers, focusing on kids and parenting.

Jeff majored in sociology and praises the Urban Program (now Westmont in San Francisco) for exposing him to the world’s problems. “At Urban, I learned not to fear people who are different,” he says. “That’s a life-changing thing to learn.” He became a Christian in high school and appreciates professors and friends who offered to pray for him. After graduating, he worked as a counselor in the admissions office and recruited Brad to attend Westmont.

Brad started out as a math major but switched to English, learning to write clearly and appreciate good literature. He met his wife during England Semester. “I loved professors like David and Crystal Downing—they’ve influenced my life so much,” he says. Attending Urbana in 1984 deepened his interest in agriculture and development and led to his career.

As they made their way along the path, Brad and Jeff were often unable to see where the trail lay in the steep rocky mountains ahead of them. “So we just kept following what we could see, and sometimes wondered if we could surmount the challenges ahead,” Jeff says.“We just kept following what we could see and sometimes wondered if we could surmount the challenges ahead,” Jeff says. “Backpacking can be an allegory for life: trust the trail maker to get you to your destination even when it takes you in an unexpected or uncertain direction.”