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WilliamPitt

(58,179 posts)
Tue Apr 15, 2014, 09:47 AM Apr 2014

"WTF Bombs?": Taking Back the Boston Marathon



Remembering the victims of the Boston Marathon bombings in Copley Square of Boston, Massachusetts.
(Photo: Ingfbruno / Wikimedia Commons)


"WTF Bombs?": Taking Back the Boston Marathon
By William Rivers Pitt
Truthout | Op-Ed

Tuesday 15 April 2014

One year from now, when the new spring sunlight shines down upon Boston's best day, we will be in the streets to cheer the runners and remember the lost. We will never forget, but we will not cower or crouch. We will be there with family and friends to celebrate the place and the time and the event that is uniquely and completely ours. It will not be taken from us by anyone, ever. This is Boston.

- "Climbing Heartbreak Hill," William Rivers Pitt, 17 April 2013


The first hint that something had gone terribly wrong came via a text message on my phone. My friend David, an endurance runner with several marathons under his belt was running his first Boston Marathon, and it was a very big deal, because he is a Boston boy born and bred, and had come home to do this incredible thing we had grown up watching and cheering together.

I was in my apartment in Brighton, in the process of missing the marathon for the first time in my life, because my daughter was only two weeks old and I wasn't going to be more than ten feet from her side. David's wife Michelle was down on Boylston Street waiting for him with their two young sons. She and I had been texting back and forth on his progress. I couldn't be there, but I wanted to know the minute he crossed the line, so I could share in his achievement in some small way.

At 2:45 p.m., Michelle texted me that he had just crossed the finish line.

Four minutes later, at 2:49 p.m., I received another text from her. It read, "wtf bombs?"

I turned on NECN, the New England version of CNN, more out of curiosity than concern, because Boston is a very old city with very old utilities, and stuff goes "Boom" all the time. A transformer could have shorted out, a water main could have burst, or a couple of cars could have collided - very common events, all, that Michelle may have mistaken for explosions. In the space of five minutes, NECN's coverage transformed from happy, lighthearted reporting on the doings of the day to confusion, and then to darkness.

Because she was not mistaken. She was, in fact, right in between the two bomb sites when the first went off, and then the second, and she was caught in the tidal surge of panic with her two children as some ran away from, and others toward, the sound and the smoke and the screaming. Michelle and her boys took shelter in a storefront, and spent the rest of the day trying to find David, which they eventually did, unharmed.

(snip)

"wtf bombs?"

I still have that text on my phone. I can't bring myself to delete it. Even in its 21st-century garbled American online-ese, it sums up perfectly the astonishment of the day. The Boston Marathon is the singular event of the city, a party from pillar to post heralding spring and athletic achievement and the deepest sense of community, and one year ago today, two people chose to tear it up. Beyond the death and agony those two caused is the sorrow-freighted fact that such a wonderful, unique event will never, ever be the same.

Martin Richard, Lu Lingzi, Sean Collier and Krystle Campbell have no stories to tell. They are the story, they and those who survived and now live lives permanently changed. I have tried over this last year to honor them with my words, to remember them, and I have shed tears for them more times than I can count. Even now, a year later, my hands shake when I try to explain all this.

I can think of only one way to honor them properly. On Sunday, I will climb into my car and navigate the springtime-muddy dirt road that leads to Route 101. I will turn east, cross the border from New Hampshire to Massachusetts, and find Route 2. As I pass the Belmont exit, where the road rises, I will see the skyline of Boston laid out before me. I will slip through Cambridge, pass through Watertown, park my car at Murph's house in Brighton, and on Monday morning, I will go to the marathon.

That day will not belong to the bombers. It will belong to us. I will honor the lost and the scarred and the city entire as best I can by reclaiming that day with my simple presence.

If you're looking for me on Monday, you'll find me on Boylston Street.

The rest: http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/23099-william-rivers-pitt-wtf-bombs-taking-back-the-boston-marathon



4 replies = new reply since forum marked as read
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"WTF Bombs?": Taking Back the Boston Marathon (Original Post) WilliamPitt Apr 2014 OP
For Boston Capt. Obvious Apr 2014 #1
Up WilliamPitt Apr 2014 #2
Touching and beautifully said, Will. Kick 11 Bravo Apr 2014 #3
One last up. WilliamPitt Apr 2014 #4
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