A Race to Remember
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BOSTON -- Two explosions seconds apart near the 2013 Boston Marathon finish line cleaved lives into before and after.
In photographs and video footage shot at the scene of the bombings that killed three and injured 264, one of the most striking images is of roadside barricades giving way -- hurdled, torn down and pushed aside as people either fled or rushed to help. Fans, runners, race staff, police officers, medical personnel, the bloodied and the fortunate are jumbled together in a terrible, disorienting kaleidoscope.
The tragedy was a leveler that made everyone who witnessed it or felt its aftershocks feel vulnerable and exposed. It also forced hidden strengths to the surface, but healing is not as linear as a road race, and the year since the last marathon has included stops and starts for those most affected. Civilian rescuer Carlos Arredondo became a celebrated public figure. Others, like then-11-year-old spectator Aaron Hern, had their hands full simply recovering. Runner Kristina Scaviola, who was on the course yards from the second explosion, is one of many who still flinch at loud noises.
Yet the most common feelings expressed by people who lived through the experience are gratitude and reassessment. Kristen McGuinness and her husband, briefly separated in the chaos at the finish line where he was waiting for her with their son and daughter, now enter races together and are expecting their third child -- on April 15. Bystander Katie Pratt suffered a concussion, permanent hearing loss and a wounded foot and feared leaving home for a time, then refused to succumb to that darkness. She will run her first marathon in her hometown next week.
"I'm not going to let what happened define this city for me," Pratt told ESPNBoston.com senior writer Jackie MacMullan.
The runners, as runners do, kept propelling themselves forward. So did all of Boston. This is where some whose paths were forever altered find themselves a year later.
Kristen McGuinness Near second bomb
In the smoke and bedlam that filled Boylston Street a few blocks short of the marathon finish line, Kristen McGuinness remembers people telling her to stop running.
She ignored them and kept going, frantic in the knowledge that her husband and two children were waiting for her in the crowd near the finish line. McGuinness, who had been on the course close to the sidewalk where the second bomb exploded, saw some of the worst of the carnage. Among the images forever seared into her memory is one of a gravely wounded child who looked to be the same age as her then-8-year-old son.
Finally, a man helped McGuinness into the Mandarin Oriental hotel and handed her his cellphone. She was reunited with her family within an hour. The next day, she returned to downtown Boston and picked up her finisher's medal, which she hung around her bedpost at home in nearby Stoneham. She vowed that nothing would keep her from the 2014 race.
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