A few days later, as players, coaches, and front office personnel boarded twenty-five of Boston’s famous amphibious duck boats for a rolling rally through the city, the 2013 world champions paid one last tribute to the fighters and the fallen of the Boston Marathon bombings. As the parade wound its way down Boylston Street, the convoy stopped at the marathon finish line. There, players Jonny Gomes and Jarrod Saltalamaccia joined staffers from Marathon Sports in placing the shining World Series trophy on the finish line. The trophy was then draped with a 617 Boston Strong Red Sox jersey. Noted tenor Ronan Tynan led thousands of parade-goers in singing “God Bless America.”
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THE DESERTED ISLAND
The holidays were a particularly difficult time for the survivors, especially for the families whose loved ones were no longer here.
For the Collier family, a trip to Florida was planned. Thanksgiving had always been Sean’s favorite holiday, as it was an opportunity to bring all his brothers and sisters together at their mom’s house for a great meal and great conversation. But this year, a change was needed as another gathering at mom’s house would only remind Collier’s loved ones of what they had lost. So the entire family hopped a plane to Florida where they could still be together, laugh a little bit, and remember the brother whose absence had brought them even closer over the past few months.
On Christmas Eve each year, the Richard family opens its Victorian home to friends and neighbors and they all sing “The Twelve Days of Christmas.” But there would be no singing, no holiday cheer on the first Christmas since the bombing. Instead, Bill and Denise retreated to their safe haven — New Hampshire, where they booked the family into a quiet inn, turned off their phones, and tried to relax. Santa Claus would be visiting one less child this year, and the realization was crushing for Martin’s parents, who had already been through so much.
Bill and Denise would continue to mourn, but they would also mobilize in memory of their son. A month later, the couple announced the formation of the Martin W. Richard Charitable Foundation with a mission to spread his message of “No More Hurting People” through educational, community, and athletic programs — including the Boston Marathon. In early February 2014, Bill Richard spoke publicly for the first time since the tragedy that took his son. “The Boston Marathon was always a special day for the family,” Richard told a crowd gathered in Dorchester. “It became clear over these last few months that we would not run from the event, but embrace it to help us heal, to honor our son and his message and to pay it forward.”
From more than 250 applicants, the family selected a group of seventy-two runners to represent Team MR8 in the 2014 marathon. The youngest runner was eighteen; the oldest was sixty-five years of age.
“While the pain of that day will forever be with us,” Bill Richard said, “our hope is that this special event becomes a source of strength for our family and a means to make a difference in the world.”
The Richards were not alone in their mission to pay it forward. Charitable donations continued to pour in from all over the world. But one Boston couple had a different idea. They wanted to bring the world to the marathon survivors. As Hank and Tricia Lewis watched from their home on the Boston waterfront while the horror unfolded on Boylston Street on that fateful April day, they were startled to see a familiar face captured in one of the photos that ran again and again on television.
“That’s Carlos,” Tricia pointed out to her husband. “He sailed with us just with us a few months ago.”
As owners of Boston-based Vantage Deluxe World Travel, the Lewises had provided in late 2012 a free river ship cruise through Europe to Arredondo and other gold star families and wounded warriors. Arredondo, with his signature cowboy hat, had left an indelible mark on ship staffers through his tireless assistance to disabled veterans during the cruise. To Hank and Tricia Lewis, Carlos was family.
“How can we help Carlos and the survivors?” Tricia asked her husband. Together they came up with the answer. The couple would invite as many marathon survivors as they could, more than a hundred in all, for an all-inclusive river cruise through the south of France. The trip was planned for December and would cost Hank and Tricia Lewis about a half million dollars.
“We figured that by living in Boston, they were constantly surrounded by visual reminders of what they had gone through,” Tricia Lewis recalls. “We wanted to provide them with a chance to escape if just for a short while. We viewed the river ship as their deserted island.” Vantage Travel staff members took to the project with great vigor and spent the next several months setting up the historic cruise.
When Michelle L’Heureux received her invitation, at first she thought it was a scam.
“No way could somebody be that generous,” she said to her boyfriend, Brian. But she quickly learned that the offer was genuine and that everything, including airfare, would be provided by Vantage Travel. The Lewises also extended an invitation to Brian, as each survivor would be allowed to bring one guest.
Two weeks before Christmas, the survivors gathered at Boston’s Logan International Airport for a flight to London and then Paris. From there they boarded the ship in Mâcon, a city of thirty-five thousand in central France that sits on the Saône River, a narrow, meandering waterway that feeds into the Rhône. On the first night aboard the ms River Discovery II, the travelers — some walking on crutches, some in wheelchairs, and others limping slightly from shrapnel wounds — milled about, sipping cocktails and making small talk. They were uncertain of what to say, whom to sit with, and whether it was even OK to smile and laugh. Michelle recognized some of the survivors she had met either at the hospital or later in support groups. Other faces she had not seen since the bombings. “I’m not sure, but I think she was standing close to me in front of Marathon Sports,” she whispered to Brian as another woman passed by. Many survivors were ambivalent about taking the trip, fearful of spending eleven days aboard a small cruise ship surrounded by constant reminders of the bombings. There was also fear that traveling in such a large group of marathon survivors would provide terrorists with an opportunity to “finish the job.” Some victims chose not to go for that very reason.
The grieving parents of Lingzi Lu did make the trip. They felt they had to. Jun Lu wanted to better understand what had happened to his beloved daughter on Boylston Street. He came in search of answers, but what he found was something different. Jun Lu did not speak English, and the translator who accompanied him and his wife on the trip did not fare much better. Without the ability to bond with other passengers, the Lus withdrew deep within themselves, walking the ship and eating alone. The pain was vivid in Jun Lu’s eyes and on his shoulders, which carried the tremendous burden of losing their only child. Passengers smiled at the Lus, not knowing how else to communicate. Lingzi’s parents could hardly muster a smile or even a nod in response.
Carlos Arredondo took the cruise with his wife, Melida, and Jeff Bauman and his fiancée, Erin Hurley. He noticed Jun Lu picking at his food and recognized the look on the man’s face. It was a look he’s seen every day in the mirror since the deaths of his sons, Alex and Brian.
If there was one thing Carlos knew, it was loss. He walked across the room and reached out. He smiled. He took the man’s hand. Carlos is charismatic and persistent, a natural healer, and as he stuck with Jun Lu, a relationship began to form. The men came to speak as friends, as mourning fathers. “Sometimes I don’t need to say anything to him,” Carlos said on the cruise. “I give him a hug, or touch his shoulders, or shake hands. We sit on the bus together. Hopefully that makes him feel comfort.”
Five days into the cruise, Carlos and his wife, Melida, accompanied Lu to a concert performed by two violinists and a cellist in the lounge. Lu told them with pride that his daughter played the cello. This was the very reason, however, that his wife remained in their cabin. The music would be too painful a reminder for her. As the trio’s instruments filled the room with harmony, the father closed his eyes. “My daug
hter’s happiness was her music,” he told Carlos. “This makes me feel close to her.” Afterward, he was finally able to smile at the memory of Lingzi.
As the ship sailed down the river, the self-consciousness fell away, and survivors began to share seafood, steaks, and fine French wines in the ship’s dining room. They swapped marathon survival stories, sometimes trying to find answers, other times seeking to provide some. “So, which bombing were you at?” was a common question. And the answer often revealed a grim serendipity: Most of them had been just steps from one another.
Alan Starr is an audio engineer who came to the 2013 marathon — the first Boston Marathon he’d ever attended — to watch a friend run. He was standing about twenty-five feet away when the first bomb exploded in front of Marathon Sports. Starr felt the impact as he was blown back into the crowd. He was dazed, confused — his mind in a fog. He stood there as people started to run. His ears were ringing terribly, but he could hear the faint sound of someone say, “Help, she’s bleeding.”
He looked to his right and saw two young women leaning against a doorway. One teenage girl was bleeding from the leg. Starr ran to help another first responder apply pressure to the girl’s gaping wound. He then took his jacket off and wrapped it around her leg. He tried keeping her calm. Moments later, someone else yelled, “You have to get out of here, there could be more bombs!” Starr grabbed the girl by her legs, lifted her up, and carried her to safety in the medical tent. He placed her down on a stretcher and returned to help others.
Alan Starr shared his story during dinner on the ship.
“I never saw the girl again,” he told fellow passengers. “I don’t know who she was. Her face was covered by debris.”
Sarah Girouard, a student at Northeastern University, sat across from Starr, listening intently as he spoke. Sarah had been hurt at the bombing. A piece of metal had ripped through her right leg below the knee, fracturing her tibia before exiting the other side. Another piece of metal had lodged in her ankle. After dinner, Sarah approached Starr in the lounge and asked him a few questions. He answered.
“That was me you saved,” she told him. “Thank you.”
Another passenger, Jillian Boynton, looked around the ship at all the survivors bearing different types of physical scars — and she felt guilty.
“My friend pulled me away from Boylston Street,” she said. “I should have stayed. I should have helped people.”
But Boynton, a sales representative from Nashua, New Hampshire, was in need of help herself. She went to the hospital hours after the bombing and collapsed after doctors told her she had suffered a damaged eardrum. She also suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder and was forced to shift from an outside sales position to an inside sales job because she cannot be around a lot of people. This cruise would be a challenge for her — one of both highs and lows.
Linda Witt also suffered hearing loss and had to undergo reconstructive dental surgery. A resident of Neenah, Wisconsin, Witt had visited Boston to watch her son, Bill Tanguay, run the marathon to raise money for the Animal Rescue League. She had also come to celebrate her birthday. Witt was enjoying a cup of coffee outside Forum when the second explosion lifted her off the ground and thrust her forward six to eight feet. She lost her hearing immediately, and she also lost her sense of taste and smell. Witt’s son, Bill, accompanied her on the cruise to France.
“Living in the Midwest, I feel detached from it all,” she said. “I came here to find my ‘marathon family’ and to bond with them. No one else understands what we’ve all gone through.” Over the next several days, Linda Witt found the bond she was looking for.
After dinner in Mâcon, Michelle L’Heureux set out to explore the city with some of the others. The night was cool and foggy, and the group took turns pointing out the city’s ancient architecture, which in some places dates back to the tenth century. They settled into a pub called La Traboule hidden away in a brick alley, and as Michelle grew more comfortable with her new companions, she opened up.
“See this?” she said, pulling her yoga pants tight around her knee and upper thigh. A deep indentation appeared in the back of her leg. “All the fatty tissue behind my knee — it was all blown off.”
Sitting next to her at La Traboule was Sabrina Dello Russo. The two had not met before the trip, but they got acquainted at dinner and became instant friends, sharing cigarettes, champagne, and stories. Sabrina, a native of Boston’s Italian North End, was at the finish line, enjoying a cocktail with a group of friends on the patio of Forum, when the second bomb detonated. The blast knocked her to the ground, leaving her dazed. It blew her cell phone out of her hand. Her ears rang. She didn’t know exactly what had happened, but she did know people were dead. As she looked around, she saw limbs strewn about.
Sabrina suffered hearing loss and a traumatic brain injury. She is also racked by survivor’s guilt, knowing how much worse her injuries could have been. Since the bombings, she has undergone gone countless hours of therapy. She had to leave her job at Liberty Mutual for a few months, and has cut her workload in half. She cries more than she used to. Like Michelle, she has nightmares. Sabrina has looked at lots of pictures from the bombings. One in particular, taken before the explosions, haunts her. In it, she stands just feet away from Roseann Sdoia, Martin Richard, and the suspected bomber, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev.
“I look at it every day,” she said.
When the group returned to the ship, Michelle noticed Jeff Bauman chatting with friends by the piano bar inside the lounge. She was standing right next to Bauman on Boylston Street — she knows this because she’s seen pictures of the two of them standing together — just seconds before the blasts, and, gruesomely, after. That evening on the ship, she met him in passing a few times, but could not muster the courage to go over and have a quiet conversation. The hours passed. The back of Michelle’s left leg got sore. She began massaging her scar gently, but the pain did not go away. At around 3 a.m. she stood, using her good leg for support, and walked over to Jeff, who was now spinning in his wheelchair on the dance floor. They embraced. Michelle, who generally does not let anyone touch the scar, held her breath as Jeff’s hand instinctively began rubbing her wound. His touch startled her, but she did not move away.
“If I could’ve taken the blast for everyone, I would have,” he whispered.
“You went through enough, Jeff,” she replied.
He looked up at Michelle and smiled. “Keep working on those legs,” he said. “You’re gonna be all right.”
She couldn’t speak. Instead, Michelle moved in and hugged Jeff tightly. After a few seconds, she let go and, without a word, walked out of the lounge, fighting back tears. Moments later, she was back in her cabin, weeping uncontrollably.
Jeff Bauman is used to these sorts of interactions. They have become as much a part of his life as his daily efforts to walk on his titanium legs. On the cruise, he felt loose and happy. So much so that on one night, he and a friend commandeered the piano player’s microphone and began rapping freestyle while a small crowd of younger survivors gathered on the dance floor, watching, dancing, and smiling.
“I know I’m a symbol of the bombings for everyone,” he said later. “Still, I feel lucky. I only had to undergo three surgeries after I was hit. So many people here are in for the long haul.”
In Saône-et-Loire, Sabrina and Michelle continued to bond at Cluny Abbey, which was established by Benedictine monks in 910. The Catholic day of prayer for the dead, All Souls’ Day, was first established here — something that was not lost on the two women and the rest of their group. The imposing church is made up of several large rooms, each separated by a heavy wooden door. When a door closed abruptly during the tour, the loud noise startled many survivors, who were visibly shaken by the sound. Some sat on benches and focused on their breathing while others exchanged knowing glances, composed themselves, and turned their attention back to the tour guide and the soaring architecture.
“Ever since the b
ombing, I can’t take loud noises,” Michelle said. “Thunderstorms and fireworks are too much for me.”
Yet, there was much to celebrate on the cruise. Jeff Bauman announced to some friends that he and Erin were expecting their first baby. Another couple, Colton Kilgore and his wife, Kimberly, survivors of the first bomb blast, announced that they, too, were expecting.
In Lyon, France, where Christmas lights lined the streets, James “Bim” Costello and his girlfriend, Krista D’Agostino, rode a giant Ferris wheel in Place Bellecour, just yards away from a magnificent statue of King Louis XIV mounted on a horse.
Costello became one of the public faces of the bombings when a photo of him wandering out of the carnage in a daze, his clothes singed and tattered, went global. He suffered shrapnel wounds and severe burns, and spent two weeks recovering in Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital. There he met D’Agostino, a nurse. They started dating. By the time they flew to France, they’d been together for seven months.
Atop the Ferris wheel, Costello proposed. D’Agostino gleefully accepted. He then slipped onto her finger a diamond ring that J. P. and Paul Norden, two brothers who each lost a leg in the bombings, helped him smuggle onto the trip without her knowing. She held the diamond up against the glittering lights of the Ferris wheel. Costello snapped a photo with his iPhone and posted it on Facebook. The couple returned to the ship and retired for the night. The next morning, they awoke to buzzing smartphones. Their photo had gone viral. Media outlets from Boston to Paris had picked up their story, and the couple was overwhelmed with interview requests. That evening at dinner, the crew brought out a cake with a huge sparkler candle for them, and everyone cheered their engagement. They kept mostly to themselves over the next couple of days, walking the chilly streets of the small villages and cities hand in hand, until they cut their trip short to travel to New York for an appearance on the Today show.
Boston Strong Page 27