Beyond the poolside parties and Aperol Spritzes, Southampton gathers in a sea of yellow for the rather exquisite luxury of moving together with purpose.
The Hamptons, naturally, know how to stage a summer. Hydrangeas appear arranged with military precision, lunches drift almost indecently into dinner and enough Aperol Spritzes circulate to suggest that orange is less a color than a seasonal religion. Still, the most memorable luxury of August may not be waiting beside a pool or concealed behind a privet hedge. It may begin at 6:30 in the morning, in running shoes, among hundreds of people choosing hope before breakfast.
On Sunday, August 2, the Hope for Depression Research Foundation will celebrate its 20th anniversary with the 11th Annual Race of Hope to Defeat Depression in Southampton Village. Led by HDRF founding chair and Race Grand Marshal Audrey Gruss, the 5K follows a graceful route around Lake Agawam. Competitive runners may chase a personal record, while families, first-timers, dogs and stroller-pushing teams are equally welcome. The point, rather movingly, is not simply how quickly one crosses the finish line. It is that no one has to move toward it alone.
Last year, more than 1,100 participants raised over $500,000 for mental health research. Since the series began in Southampton in 2016 and later expanded to Palm Beach and New York City, it has generated more than $5 million for depression research. Those figures carry particular weight once one remembers that depression respects no social category, summer address or immaculate façade.
Gruss founded HDRF in 2006 in memory of her mother, Hope, who lived with clinical depression. Over the past two decades, the foundation has contributed more than $80 million to research focused on depression and related mood disorders. Its Depression Task Force, established in 2012, brings neuroscientists from leading universities into collaboration rather than competition, pooling knowledge and data in pursuit of more precise treatments.
Such work offers a deeply necessary correction to the lingering habit of treating depression as a private weakness rather than a medical illness. Elegance, after all, has never required silence, particularly when silence protects stigma instead of people.
Quite fittingly, the race’s signature yellow creates a visual language of its own. Caps, shirts and jackets transform Southampton into a bright current of bodies passing through the village, each person carrying a private reason for being there. Yellow is cheerful, certainly, though here it also becomes quietly defiant: sunlight made wearable, optimism given muscle and compassion placed firmly in motion.
In the days leading up to the race, HDRF’s Week of Hope fills Southampton with large yellow flags displayed by local retailers, turning the village into a public declaration of support. The accompanying HOPE Summer Seminar features psychologist Dr. Michael Pantalon discussing a scientifically grounded approach to motivating healthy change in ourselves and those we love.
Perhaps this is where the morning acquires its particular beauty. The ability to walk, run, breathe deeply and feel the body respond can seem ordinary until life makes it precious. When directed toward a cause, physical effort becomes more than wellness theater or another item on an impeccably curated summer schedule. It becomes solidarity with a pulse.
The Race of Hope understands that body and mind have never occupied separate worlds. One carries the other through grief, recovery, exhaustion and renewal. Each footfall around Lake Agawam becomes a small refusal of isolation, while every yellow cap signals that seeking help need not remain hidden behind closed doors.
At its heart, this may be the true glamour of the morning. No one needs a perfect pace, a sculpted stride or even a particularly convincing relationship with cardio. One simply has to arrive, join the current and allow purpose to carry the rest.
Check-in begins at 6:30 a.m. at the Southampton Cultural Center, followed by the opening ceremony at 8 a.m. and the race at 8:30. Registration is available at southampton.raceofhopeseries.com.
The pool will still be there afterward. So will the Spritz. Hope, quite rightly, deserves the first toast.
