A 100-Mile Tribute to Aaron: Raising Awareness for Meningitis B

Anthony Mills stood outside Anfield with tired legs and a quiet sense of something he had not felt in months: peace.

His 18-year-old son Aaron died suddenly in January from meningitis B. No warning he could act on, no second chance. Just a brutal, overnight shift from teenage promise to unthinkable loss.

For months, Mills has been trying to make sense of it by making sure his son is not forgotten. This week, that mission took the shape of a 100-mile run and a moving, makeshift roadshow of grief, love and hard facts about a disease most students had barely heard of.

A 100-Mile Tribute

Family friend Shaun McEntee set off from Kidderminster Harriers’ Aggborough Stadium, pointed himself north towards Liverpool, and ran. Day after day. More than 100 miles in total, finishing at Anfield on Sunday.

He did it for Aaron. He did it to shout about MenB in a way a poster or a leaflet never could.

Mills joined him along the route, not on the roads but in the lecture theatres. At the University of Wolverhampton. Harper Adams University in Shropshire. Reaseheath College & University Centre in Nantwich. The University of Chester. At every stop, he stood in front of young people Aaron’s age and told them what meningitis B can do.

Most, he said, had no idea.

“The whole experience was just amazing,” Mills admitted. “I feel a bit guilty because I enjoyed every single minute of it.”

The guilt comes from the contrast: the worst thing that has ever happened to him, and the best way he can now honour the boy he lost.

“I owe Shaun a lot, he's done all this in Aaron's memory and it's been phenomenal,” he said. “Aaron was an incredible person and to just let him go like that... it just felt so wrong. I've really tried to get his legacy over the last nine months to what it should be because his potential was unlimited.”

A Generation That Missed Out

Babies in the UK have been routinely vaccinated against MenB for more than a decade. Aaron was too old when that programme came in. His age group slipped through the net.

That gap haunts his father. It also drives him.

Mills and those around him have turned their grief into a campaign: pushing the message that students and young adults should get vaccinated, asking awkward questions, challenging the assumption that meningitis is something that happens to “other people”.

He knows there is only so much one family can do, but he is not finished. “Still work to be done,” he says, and it does not sound like a slogan. It sounds like a promise.

Ashes on the Road to Anfield

By the time McEntee reached Liverpool, his body had been through five days of punishment. The weather turned on him on Thursday and Friday. The miles grew longer. The doubts got louder.

What kept him going was not a training mantra or a finish-time target. It was a small canister of Aaron’s ashes he carried with him the whole way.

“I'm exhausted, so tired, but it's been so worth it,” he said outside Anfield, the run finally over. “I feel like we've actually got the message across.”

There were moments on the road, in conversations with students, that stuck with him. “There were a couple of moments that in my head could have saved a couple of lives. Those people said they'd get the vaccine as a result of what we've done, which is obviously massively worth it.”

The physical struggle peaked in the middle of the challenge. “Thursday and Friday were really tough,” he said. “It was probably the lowest I had been. The weather was against us and I was already exhausted and I knew I had lots to go.”

But the ashes in his pocket, and the reason for the run, kept dragging him forward.

A Name That Now Travels

For Mills, the impact is measured in something more personal than miles or money raised. It is measured in how often he now hears his son’s name.

“I'm kind of at peace,” he said. “A lot of people know Aaron's name, they know Aaron's story, and it's really helped me a lot. I feel like I can move forward a bit... I've healed a lot of wounds from it and it was incredible, the whole thing.”

That is the legacy he has been chasing: not a statue or a plaque, but awareness. A story that makes someone book a vaccine appointment. A name that lingers in the mind of a student who had never considered meningitis B until a grieving father walked into their lecture hall.

Aaron’s generation missed the routine jab. His father is trying to make sure the next one does not.