I know that usually my blogs are about sports in Boston, but on this day I didn’t feel like that would be appropriate. On April 15th, 2013 it was shaping up to be another great Marathon Monday in the historic city of Boston. It was the 117th annual race and everyone was extremely excited to be there. I was on my first day of summer vacation following my senior year and was planning on going into the race with two of my friends after we finished track practice. We were going to visit a couple of my friends at Heartbreak Hill in Newton, right on Boston College’s campus and then follow the route down to the finish line to meet up with some of our other friends for the day. It was the first time being in the city for the marathon and I could not have been more excited to be there for the day. We took the red line from school to Park Street and then took the green line from Park Street all the way up to Boston College for the festivities. We met up with our BC friends and spent around an hour on Heartbreak Hill which was great. A lot of positive energy towards the runners who were still trying to complete the race. “Heartbreak Hill” got its nickname because it is the 20 mile mark of the race and it is a brutal hill to get over. It has been the breaking point for a lot of people as well as been a marker for runners to let them know that they are in the homestretch. From there we started our own walk down the hill along the race route towards the finish line on Boylston. This was at about 2:00 PM. As we were walking down we passed another friend of ours who attends Boston University with a few of his friends. We hung out for about ten minutes, shooting the breeze about the Bruins who had a home game that night and then we were on our way. It was a hot day so after walking for so long we figured that we would just hop on the green line and take it as close as we could go. And then at about 2:50 we were about a mile short of the finish line on Boylston when the green line stopped. We were confused as to what was going on and when a Boston Police Officer got on the train and ordered everyone out. I asked him what happed as we were leaving the train and he replied to me, “All I know is there was an explosion at the finish line.” This didn’t really answer my question too much in a sense that I thought that it was some asshole college kid with fireworks that went off at the wrong time. It wasn’t until we hopped off and the police was stopping all of the runners in their tracks. They cut off all of Boylston and a block surrounding it so we had to take back roads back and we just assumed that we could around the road block and meet up with our friends there. I looked at my phone to give our friends a call at the finish line to see what they were doing. I then realized that the cell towers had all been turned off. That is when I realized that it was a little more than a dumb practical joke. We kept walking and kept trying to get in contact with our families and friends to see what was going on. And then these two women came out of the back door of a building and were nearly in tears walking fast away from Boylston Street. They began talking to us and they told us that there were two separate explosions on Boylston, one at the finish line and another one a short time later further up the race route. One of the women described the scene as chaos and said there was blood all over the street. My friends and I were horrified. We walked for three hours from the furthest point north of the city to the southern most part from Boston College, back to my car at Boston College High. My friend lived pretty close by so we drove to his house for dinner and to watch the news and that is where I realized how horrible the events were that we had just come from. 3 people were dead and hundreds were permanently injured because of these attacks. And the attackers were still on the loose. In the area there were sporting events cancelled, and I had the opportunity to go to the Boston Bruins game on Wednesday the 17th which was the first home game of any team since the attacks. The atmosphere was electric and there was not a dry eye in the building as they showed a video montage of the events. With Phillip Phillips’ song “Home” playing, it showed the heroics of the common men and women who sprang into action to help their fellow Bostonians. Following the video, Rene Rancourt came out in his black and gold tuxedo to sing the national anthem, as tradition. What happened next was unbelievable and gives me goosebumps thinking about it to this day. He started singing and encouraged everyone in the crowd to join in. After two lines he left it completely up to the sellout crowd at the TD Garden and together we sang as one. It was the most incredible thing that I have been a part of and even the players said that they had never been so amped up to play following an anthem. It wasn’t until Thursday April 18th, 2013 that the FBI released the pictures of two brothers as the suspects for the attacks and the manhunt was on. After an MIT Police Officer was murdered the whispers began that it was the two brothers who were wanted for the bombings. And sure enough, it was. There was a massive police chase that night and I was listening to the scanner for the entire night. It was better than any episode of cops I had ever seen. The older of the two suspects was killed in the shootout and the younger was found hiding inside the winterizing tarp of a boat the next morning before finally being taken into custody that night. This ended a week from hell for the city of Boston and was an awful reminder for the rest of the nation that terrorism is still a real threat. But they did not succeed in trying to terrorize the American people, in fact they did just the opposite. The national support for the people of the city and the region was phenomenal and it brought the entire city together in tragedy during the event and triumph in the months following. Earlier this week, a jury found Suspect #2 guilty of all 30 counts he was facing and he will be sentenced to either life in prison or the death penalty. Either way, that scumbag is off our streets for good and will either rot in solitary or rot in hell. Either of which is ok with me.
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Pat O'Hearne
Just a kid from Boston trying his luck in Cleveland Archives
March 2017
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