By David Madden

ATLANTIC CITY, N.J. (CBS) — A 61-year-old man from Collegeville, Pa., has set out on a cross-country journey to honor his late wife and raise money to fight ovarian cancer.

Dave Brown’s wife, Joan, succumbed to the disease a year and a half ago.

“I said, if there’s anything I can do to use what she went through help other women, was she for it?” he recalls.  “She said, ‘Absolutely.’ ”

So Dave retired from his job at the mutual fund firm Vanguard and started training.

He began his walk in Atlantic City, NJ, planning to walk 14 miles per day, along US Routes 40 and 50, expecting to arrive in San Francisco in mid-October.

Brown says he’ll be blogging each day and taking pictures along the way.  There’s a link on his blog, ocjoan.blogspot.com, to donate to the Ovarian Cancer Research Fund.  He’s already raised about $8,000 and has a goal of $110,000.