By Kate Coli

Everything had built up to this day. Preliminary qualifying races, early morning training days, and bowls of nothing but the ultimate carb: pasta. April 15, 2013, was bound to be a monumental day for my dad Chuck Coli, small business owner of Chuck’s Convertible Parts, who, among other anxious runners, had prepared months on end for the 117th Boston Marathon. 

A gray hue clung to the sky, and the crisp morning air was a freezing 31 degrees. A crowd of around 30,000 runners clustered around 50 school buses in Boston that were going to drive them to the starting line. Hopkinton, a town approximately 36 miles west of Boston and the starting point of the race, was soon going to be a place of nerves and chaos. My dad recalls that the area was like a “controlled pandemonium.” A herd of energized runners sat in a circle stretching, trying to prepare for the exciting day ahead of them. Every athlete in the group had worked relentlessly to even qualify for the race. The qualifying times for the 26.2 mile long race ranged from 3 hours and 5 minutes for ages 18-35, up to 4 hours and 55 minutes for ages 80 and over, making the race difficult to qualify for.

Chuck walking to the start line the morning of the 117th Boston Marathon. Photo credit: Chuck Coli.

Chuck had run in many races in the past, both in Virginia and out of state. A few recurring for him races included the Carlsbad 5000 in California and the qualifying marathon for Boston, the Richmond Marathon here in Virginia. 

Among the threads of excited family members and locals gathered behind barricades to cheer on the runners were two brothers. Just like the runners, the two had also taken measures to prepare for the big day that was the 117th annual Boston Marathon. Tamerlan and Dzhokar Tsarnaev had done extensive research on how to construct explosives, while simultaneously buying the materials to go through with the project. The end result of their preparation became known as the Boston Marathon Bombing of 2013. 

My mom, Minh Coli, and I were huddled around the television at home as the news channel’s banners kept revolving on-screen. Terrorist attack at Boston Marathon. Some injured, casualties yet not confirmed. I sat on the carpet, age twelve, nervously playing with the woven brown fibers as my mom got off the phone. “He’s okay,” she said, looking back up at the screen. Earlier that afternoon, we had received a phone call in the car from my Aunt Lyann, who frantically explained to my mom from Las Vegas that two bombs had gone off at the finish line at the marathon my dad was running in at the time. The rest of the ride home was an anxiety-ridden race to get in front of the television to see the most recent news. The cell towers in the city were cut off because of safety regulations, making the moments before the assuring phone call about my dad even more anxious. 

The marathon, which takes place annually on Patriot’s Day, is an unofficial local holiday in the Boston area. On the night before the highly anticipated event, one can see neighbors gathering for parties and backyard barbecues. Bands play during the night and late afternoon in public areas, uniting the people of Boston with simple guitar chords. Stephanie Carpenter, a life-long member of the Boston community, says that “it’s just like Christmas Day” and “it’s a come-together moment for the city.” While the rest of the city was celebrating, girls from Wellesley College were preparing for the next morning by making signs for the runners. Their colorful posters read things like “Kiss me, I’m an econ major” and “Kiss me, I’m endurance enhancing.” Megan Turchi from the Boston Globe says that “whoever has the wittiest signage will get the most kisses from strangers. That is the goal.”

At around mile 13, the girls were crowded behind concert-like barricades, screaming and cheering on the runners that were constantly passing by. The minute-and-half long run by the students is called the Wellesley Scream Tunnel. “You’re so charged up and excited,” Chuck said in response to the exhilarating experience. This a tradition that has stretched on for around 121 years for the girls of Wellesley College and has always been a key part of the Boston Marathon for runners. 

“I just wanted to finish. I just wanted to experience the whole marathon and just finish!” my dad says with a reluctant laugh. He is describing the final mile and a quarter of the thrilling race. “You see the sign that says ‘25 Miles,’ and you’ve been watching for that. If you’re still functioning at 25 miles, you know you’ll finish,” he says now, the same excitement from that 25-mile mark of the marathon creeping into his smile. 

The last ten minutes of his race went by in a hurry. As the finish line at Boylston and Hereford Streets inched closer, crowds of people twenty to thirty deep packed behind barricades and squished together on bleachers became visible. Sound from the crowd and announcers reverberated off the walls of the office buildings towering over the finish line and into the ears of the runners. ”I felt like I was a gladiator in an arena with the people cheering and screaming,” my dad said. “I almost wanted to slow down because I wanted the feeling to last.”

The Boston Marathon finish line before the two explosions. Photo credit: Aaron Tang.

The triumph lasted for only nine seconds after he finished. A fellow runner approached him, extending an extra foil wrap to keep his body temperature up. The two started talking when they heard the first boom at 2:49 p.m. “It was loud enough to where the concussion hurt my ears,” Chuck said, recalling the moment when everything went awry. Gillian Reny, a woman who was closer to the bomb, says that there “was a complete, utter chilling silence, and then chaos. Chaos like I’d never seen and never hope to see again.” 

The moment resulted in initial confusion for Chuck, since he was slightly too far away from the finish line to make out what the commotion was about. The man next to him chalked the noise up to a malfunctioning generator, and they continued their conversation. However, twelve seconds into talking, a second boom shook the civilians and runners. “We turned around again and saw a second plume of white smoke go up in the air. That’s when everyone started making eye contact with one another. You could see fear in people’s eyes. We knew what was going on,” Chuck says. Commotion quickly spread through the attendees and athletes, as everyone attempted to make a panicked exit. ”There were about 150 people between me and the finish line, and all of them started running towards me,” he stated. The fear of the attack soon turned to fear of getting trampled as the confused and panic-stricken spectators tried to flee the area. 

The finish line at the marathon moments after the explosions. Photo credit: Aaron Tang

The rest of the day, from Chuck’s point of view, can only be described as frantic. All cell towers were shut off to restrict possible criminal communications and explosions, and worried spectators wandered relentlessly up and down the streets looking for their loved ones. Many people, including my dad, were still confused as to what had actually happened. Chuck walked by a Starbucks and stopped at the doorway once he saw the blue light of a television. The luminous flatscreen drew him into the coffee shop as he lingered at the edge of the crowd huddled around the screen. This was the first time he heard what really took place earlier that day at the finish line. “None of the people in the Starbucks were runners,” he said. This made it even more shocking when one of the people turned around and saw my dad with his race number still pinned to his blue running shirt. Everyone quickly turned from the television and peppered him with hungry questions about what it was like being at the finish line. 

Chuck later arrived at his hotel, which was filled with worried visitors, runners, and a SWAT team. ”The team had already gone through my room. They went through all of them to sniff them out for any trace of a bomb.” The searches continued inside the hotel, making for more discomfort and unease to spread through the temporary residents of the building.  

On April 19, 2013, the manhunt for Dzhokar and Tamerlan Tsarnaev officially began. At 12:43 a.m, Ann O’Neill from CNN stated that the brothers “engaged in a gunbattle with the police and used four of the five IEDs, including a pressure cooker bomb and pipe bombs” after the police tracked their car to Watertown, Massachusetts. As the two proceeded to flee after the fight, Tamerlan was taken down by three officers. His brother quickly got back in their stolen SUV and attempted to run into the officers and instead ended up running over his brother. A few hours later, Tamerlan died at a local medical center due to traumatic injuries. The eventual federal indictment claimed that his Dzhokar’s carelessness “seriously injured Tamerlan and contributed to his death.”

Dzhokar, who was thoroughly injured, took cover inside a boat parked in a driveway in Watertown while armed officers searched the town and put a “shelter in place” order into effect. It would later be found that the order would last for around a day. In the book Long Mile Home: Boston Under Attack, the City’s Courageous Recovery and the Epic Hunt for Justice, authors Scott Helman and Jenna Russell illustrate the door-to-door search that was occurring in Watertown. They write that the main concern of many of the civilians in the Boston area was “What if the bomber is hiding near my house?” The most the residents could do was “draw the blinds” and “try to explain to their children why they couldn’t run out into the beckoning sunshine.” 

Later that day, the town’s “shelter in place” order was terminated, and civilian David Henneberry decided to take a look at his boat, The Slipaway II, parked in his driveway. Instead of finding an empty boat, Henneberry encountered “a man covered in blood” who was hidden “under the tarp.” From there, the police ordered the suspect to exit the boat. Dzhokhar complied, and they took him into custody, allowing him to heal in a local hospital. The nerve-wracking manhunt was finally over.

In the following years, Tsarnaev’s case was deliberated over by a federal jury, after extensive interrogation by the FBI and testimonies from survivors of the bombing. After the multi-year long wait for the trial to commence and finish, the jury came to a final decision. On April 8, 2015, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was given the death sentence. However, this was not the end of Tsarnaev’s story. 

To the dismay of many, the bomber’s death sentence was overturned by three federal judges in August of this year. Tsarnaev had been on death row for five years, anticipating the looming conclusion. Judge O. Rogeriee Thompson stated to The New Yorker’s Masha Gessen that the reason his sentence was retracted was because Tsarnaev was not awarded a fair trial. She said that “even the very worst among us deserves to be fairly tried and lawfully punished.”

With the only person left to blame slipping away from the grasp of his death sentence, survivors of the terrorist attack were enraged. Rebekah Gregory, a survivor who lost her leg in the bombing and later returned to run the marathon as an amputee, tweeted with boiling anger and confusion when she received the news: “The US Appeals court chooses to overturn the sentence of this COWARD??! …Disgusting.” Others tweeted in response with similar anger. One user said that they were “disgusted with the judicial system,” while another tried to justify life in prison over the death sentence. As of now, Tsarnaev currently is waiting for a potential new penalty trial while living out the final verdict of life in prison. 

The aftermath of the Boston Bombing has extended on for many years. For survivors like Rebekah, the process of learning to live with the effects of the attack have been difficult, but doable. Similar to my dad, Rebekah kept running the race for years after the bombing. Chuck spoke on the topic of running another race, saying that “there was no way that the 2013 Boston was going to be my last.” He went back a second and third time to Boston, saying that he “made peace with what happened” during his post-2013 marathons. During one of his final races, he remembered running past Bill Iffrig in 2013. ”I passed him at mile 21,” Chuck says, remembering the last sighting he had of the now-famous runner. His name may not be recognizable, but Iffrig is the subject of one of the most well-known pictures from that day. A photo of him falling as the first bomb went off was published on the cover of Sports Illustrated and has been used in many publications. 

The 2013 Boston Marathon inspired the 2016 movie Patriot’s Day. The film has not only become a source of entertainment but also a film that educates viewers about what occurred. The realistic picture depicts both the bombing and the manhunt that followed. Released just a short three years after the attack, Patriot’s Day allows viewers that may not have a personal connection to the event to realize just how real it actually was.

Director Peter Berg, who has also acted in Alias and directed several movies, such as 2008’s Hancock, wrote alongside Matt Cook and Joshua Zetumer to develop the picture. The three found it imperative that real pieces of film from the manhunt in 2013 were woven in, along with segments where actors played their roles, making the movie feel as if one is watching a full-length real video of what happened that day. To add to the realism of the movie, the creators made the decision to include Boston citizens in the movie, such as a police officer played by Boston native Mark Wahlberg. 

Monday, April 15, 2013 – Lelisa Desisa Benti, the male winner of the Boston Marathon crosses the finish line at Copley Square. Photo credit: Eric Haynes/Governor’s Office.

After the bombing, one of the questions that no one wanted to face finally surfaced: Will the race continue? Thomas Grilk, CEO of the Boston Athletic Association, the organization that conducts the race, decided against shutting down the marathon. The deciding factor of his decision was tradition. Grilk said to NBC Boston: “When you have a race that’s been run over the same course since 1897, you have families that generation by generation have been going.” He and his team rejuvenated the race, and people from all over the world have continued to attend and honor the lives taken by the bombing. 

The survivors, runners, civilians, and personnel that were present for the Boston Marathon Bombing have been put through panic and confusion that extends far beyond the average person’s knowledge. However, the city and its inhabitants have healed and used the attack to become a stronger community. Shortly after the bombing, citizens of the city grouped together and created a new slogan for their community: “Boston Strong.” The unofficial saying for the city’s locals represents a new determination and strength that the city now wears on its sleeve. While the city previously represented a state of hardship, it has now become a unified community that has proved that Boston is not afraid to show its scars.