The Marathon Bombing Ten Years Later: Remember. Be Strong.

“And every third Monday in April, you welcome people from all around the world to the Hub for friendship and fellowship and healthy competition -- a gathering of men and women of every race and every religion, every shape and every size; a multitude represented by all those flags that flew over the finish line.”                        --President Barack Obama

Why does it seem so often that it is such a beautiful day when the bombs go off? When planes become weapons? When a race becomes a place of the fallen and the courageous and the innocent?

It was bright and a bit chilly, a typical mid-April Boston day, the 15^th of the month, 2013. The sun peaked in and out of white puffy clouds in a sharp and clear blue sky, looking down upon the race course and runners. They were 26,000 strong who gathered in Hopkinton at dawn. It was the race of a lifetime for many of them, as they ran to raise funds for charity or ran to prove to themselves, “I can do it!” or ran for fun or ran to win.  At 9:00 am, when the “BANG!” of the starting pistol went off and the mobility impaired and then the wheelchair racers came out of the chute, thus began the long trip east to the Hub.

It was and still is 26 miles, 385 yards, from a New England town green to Copley Square.

For the 117^th time on that third Monday in April, Patriots Day, Boston was playing host to the oldest marathons in the world, begun in 1897.  Tens of thousands since then had run the suburban streets and urban hills, hopping gracefully over trolley tacks, moving through the tunnel of screams by Wellesley College, grabbing cups of cold water proffered by the thousands of enthusiastic spectators that lined the route. 

It was supposed to be a normal Marathon Monday, exciting and fun and a great race. Folks from around here know the drill for the day. Some have even been known to go for a hat trick. Start at 5:30 am in Lexington for the reenactment of the shot heard round the world, then head into Boston and Fenway Park to watch the Red Sox play an 11:10 morning game, and finally after the game, walk over to Kenmore Square and watch the runners as they near the finish.

An absolutely perfect Boston day.  Until it wasn’t.

I was home working on a newspaper column when a little before 3 pm, the radio reported that there had been some type of explosion near the finish line. Surfing on my keyboard to Boston.com for the latest update, I discovered it was frozen, static, overwhelmed by too much traffic. Then the radio confirmed that there were two suspected bombs that had gone off and there were, no doubt, many dead and injured.

And my heart fell.

The first person I thought of was Michelle, a good friend, fellow singer in a community choir, whose kind spirit still makes everyone she meets feel special. Just hours before on Route 135 in Natick, a group of us had cheered her on, waving wildly as she ran by us, in her first Boston Marathon.

“Is she ok?” Like so many of us I wondered and worried. For her. For friends over by the finish line in the cheering crowds and people on the patios downtown drinking beer and celebrating spring and of course, all those runners.

So earnest. So committed. So strong. So threatened.

Later we’d learn that a pair of terrorist brothers packed pressure cookers full of shrapnel and bomb material and left them on the street in backpacks to take down and take out anyone in the vicinity. Three died: Krystle Campbell, a 29-year-old restaurant manager from Medford, Lingzi Lu, a 23-year-old Boston University grad student and 8-year-old Martin Richard, from Dorchester. It’s so important to remember their names and their lives, especially a decade later.

Remember the more than 260 people maimed and injured. Remember the traumatized runners like Michelle and how so many people that day asked, pleaded, “Is she ok? Where is he? Please God, please….” There were the brave first responders. The amazing doctors and the nurses who saved so many lives. Anonymous crowd members who rushed into the mayhem to rescue and to comfort the victims. Remembering it feels like a bad dream, a memory so hard and intense and sad I can’t shake it.

If there was anything redemptive in those initial days after, it was the fierce and brave Boston strong response of so many. From ordinary citizens. Leaders too, like Red Sox star David Ortiz who reminded a packed Fenway crowd a week after the bombing, “This is our _____ city! And no one is going to dictate our freedom. Stay strong Boston!” He expressed our communal commitment to get back up and our communal anger at so cruel and hateful an act. 

It still makes no sense. So much pain and tears and loss and why? Sometimes the world just breaks apart. Sometimes evil emerges from the shadows. And then we must respond with courage. President Barack Obama spoke at Trinity Church Boston at the memorial service for the bombing victims, forty-eight hours after the explosions. He reminded America and the world of the greatest powers of all. Faith. Community. People united.

“Our faith in each other, our love for each other, our love for country, our common creed that cuts across whatever superficial differences there may be — that is our power. That’s our strength. That’s why a bomb can’t beat us.”

Ten years. May God bless our sacred memories. May God bless Monday’s marathon too.   

The Reverend John F. Hudson is Senior Pastor of the Pilgrim Church, United Church of Christ, in Sherborn, Massachusetts (pilgrimsherborn.org). He blogs at sherbornpastor.blogspot.com and is a resident scholar at the Collegeville Institute at Saint John’s University in Collegeville, Minnesota. For twenty-five years he was a columnist whose essays appeared in newspapers throughout Massachusetts and Rhode Island. He has served churches in New England since 1989. For comments, please be in touch: pastorjohn@pilgrimsherborn.org.