Survival diaries: Decade on, Boston Marathon bombing echoes

In the decade since the Boston Marathon bombing, the streets and sidewalks have been repaired, and memorials stand at the site of the explosions to remember the three who died

She didn’t even know the Boston Marathon was going on when she wandered out for a walk along Boylston Street. Nor could she understand why someone would run 26.2 miles for “a statement necklace and a banana.”

Then, Adrienne Haslet says, “My life changed.”

The ballroom dancer was standing next to the second of two pressure-cooker bombs that exploded among the spectators watching the finish of the 2013 race. Three were killed and nearly 300 others wounded. Seventeen people lost limbs in the blast. Haslet was one of them.

She relearned to walk with a prosthetic left leg and vowed to return to dancing. She also set a goal that surprised friends and family who knew her as someone who didn’t like to sweat in public: She would return to the course, this time as a runner.

Haslet completed the race for the first time in 2016, and she is back in the field for Monday’s 127th Boston Marathon as the city, the country and fans of the cherished sporting event mark 10 years since the finish-line attacks. In the decade since, the streets and sidewalks have been repaired, and memorials at the sites of the explosions remember those who died: Krystle Campbell, Lu Lingzi, Martin Richard.

But the healing continues.

And, for many, the race itself is an important part.

Bombing survivors with no previous interest in distance running make it a bucket-list goal; for others, friends and family enter on their behalf. Doctors and first responders and others affected by the attacks are also drawn back to the race on the Massachusetts holiday of Patriots’ Day that commemorates the start of the Revolutionary War.

“We would say in the Navy, ‘Like a fire in the gut,’” says Eric Goralnick, an emergency medicine physician who helped treat the wounded in 2013 and ran the following year.

“I just felt it in my gut. It was something I had to do,” Goralnick says. “I wanted to feel like this is our city, and this is our event, and it’s the people’s marathon. And I wanted to participate in it and demonstrate that we’re not going to live in fear of terrorists.”

The Boston Marathon might look like a sporting event up in front, where the world’s fittest athletes compete for a prize purse approaching $1 million and the right to claim one of sports’ most treasured titles.

But it isn’t just a race.

Or, at least, not just one race.

Following the elite runners from Hopkinton to Boston’s Back Bay on the third Monday in April are 30,000 others who are not in it to win it, or maybe not even to achieve a personal best. They are happy simply to endure, to raise some money for charity, to check a box on some emotional or athletic to-do list.

“That’s the cool thing about these races, that everybody on the start line has a story,” 2018 women’s winner Des Linden says. “That’s so inspirational. And I think so many of those stories came out of that, the bombing year.

“It’s very moving,” she says. “And I think it is to the point: We’re going to get up, and keep pressing forward.”

Since the bombing, the field also includes many who were not marathoners – or even runners – but were drawn to the race as part of the healing process. The Boston Athletic Association waives qualifying for those who were “personally and profoundly impacted” by the attack, including the wounded, their families, and the charities associated with the victims and survivors. This year, 264 One Fund participants will participate.

Dave Fortier, who was hit by shrapnel from one of the bombs, was planning to be a “one and done” when he entered in 2013 as a charity runner on behalf of a friend with leukemia. He has returned every year since.

“It became a ‘take back the finish line’ kind of a piece,” Fortier says. “You’re here to say: ‘Not me. Not us.’”

Fortier, who created the One World Foundation to help connect survivors of terrorist attacks and mass shootings with peers from other traumatic events, has another reason for running again in 2014.

“I don't remember finishing the first one,” he said.

Bill and Denise Richard were steps away from one of the backpack bombs when it exploded. Their son, Martin, 8, died. Jane, his sister, lost her left leg. Denise Richard was blinded in one eye. Bill Richard’s eardrums were blown out and he was hit by shrapnel in his legs.

Henry Richard returned to Boylston Street to run the race in 2022, raising his arms in triumph as he crossed the finish line and then collapsing into the arms of his family. He was presented with his finisher's medal by 2014 winner Meb Keflezighi.

“It was definitely a personal accomplishment that I thought about for a very long time,” says Richard, who is 21 now and running again this year. “It was a very special day for myself and for my family to finally watch me cross the finish line. I waited years to do it, and I’m glad that it happened and I can continue to do it.”

Keflezighi's victory a year after the bombing ended a three-decade championship drought for the Americans and a year of anxiety in anticipation of the race’s return. Fears of another attack loomed. Boston Police Commissioner Bill Evans struggled to find the middle ground between making everyone feel safe and turning the event into an “armed camp.”

And he knew he would not be able to run in the race, snapping a 25-year streak.

“It’s tough to watch. But I knew I had to,” he says in his memorabilia-filled office at Boston College, where he is now the police chief. “I knew my responsibility was putting that race back together.”

Chris Tarpey entered in 2014 when the BAA invited back those affected by the attacks and has returned every year until the pandemic broke his streak in 2020. Each time, he raised his middle finger when he passed the sporting goods store where one of the bombs sent shrapnel into his right knee — his own message to the bombers, Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev.

“I say, ‘Screw you, Tsarnaev brothers,’” Tarpey says. “I could never understand. What was their point? What was their message? What was their cause? What were they trying to prove?”

Answers have proven especially hard to come by for Tarpey: His daughter, Liz, died in Hawaii in a hiking accident two months after the attack. “I think of the marathon bombing is minor compared to what happened with my daughter,” he says.

But both taught him the same lesson: Everything can change in an instant.

“An instant,” he repeats. “Life is precious.”

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AP Sports Writer Jimmy Golen has covered the Boston Marathon since 1995.