Michael Sullivan was a spectator last year with his daughter Cora. This is his story.
I was waiting with my three-year-old daughter Cora at the family waiting area when we heard the two explosions. We were sitting down on a curb on Stuart Street at the family waiting area. Cora was exhausted. When I heard the explosions, I remember thinking that it didn’t sound like normal city noise; like a truck tire popping or something like that. A few minutes later several people came running down the street shouting something about a bomb. A bomb? At the marathon? My fellow spectators and I looked around at each other. No way. Why would someone bomb the marathon?
Then I looked down at my phone and realized there was no signal. A couple minutes pass and a dozen messages all come through at once from various people. My friend Stacey who I had not spoken to in over a year asked me if I was OK. My brother told me that CNN was reporting a bomb went off at the finish line. I told him to text me updates as no data was going through the phone.
For the next two-plus hours I carried Cora on my hip all over the surrounding blocks looking for information. No word of Jerel at the medical tent. I was tracking him with text updates and I knew he would have been crossing the finish line at around the time of the explosions. I became more and more frantic. Seemingly out of nowhere dozens of military hummers and police with automatic weapons descended on the Back Bay. When my eyes started watering, Cora asked me what was wrong. I told her that someone had done something very bad and that many people were hurt and I couldn’t find Jerel. She said, “I miss Jerel. I want to see Jerel.” At one BAA information tent, a kind volunteer noticed my distress and gave me a couple bottles of vitamin water and kindly reminded me to stay calm.
At one point I went into Turner Fisheries at the corner of Stuart and Dartmouth to use their phone. Inside I was met with the sounds of runners and spectators sipping cocktails and eating shrimp staring at televisions with live shots of the street right outside. It was surreal. Outside I went up to one of the guys with the automatic weapons and asked him if anyone was seriously hurt. “Yes.” Did he know names? “You know I can’t tell you that.”
Eventually Jerel was able to call me and I told him to meet me at Club Cafe, a gay bar a few blocks south of the finish line. I went in with Cora and asked the waiter if he could make a hot chocolate for her. “Well this is a bar.. but we have some chocolate milk we can heat up.” I thanked him and ordered something for Cora to eat. About 20 minutes later Jerel came in and I hugged him tight. I had already been in touch with Lucy, Cora’s mom, who offered to come and pick us up. When she arrived we paid and left, Lucy and I walking briskly through the crowded sidewalk; Jerel had to remind us to slow down – he had just run a marathon after all. I had almost forgotten that was the point of us being there.
We walked passed an absurdly long line of parked ambulances. I didn’t realize there were so many ambulances in the city. Lucy had parked very illegally in some tow zone area on some street in the South End but didn’t get ticketed or towed. The police had bigger fish to fry. She dropped us off at home and offered to take Cora back to her house. I was grateful to her and her partner Elizabeth for keeping Cora safe and looking after her. Jerel and I trudged up to our apartment on the third floor, Jerel sorted through the 80 or so Facebook posts to his wall, and, dazed, we turned off the TV.
This year I am running the marathon. I am not a runner. I took up running partly because of the bombings and partly because its difficult to be a non-runner in a relationship with a runner. Boston is this city that people love to hate. As a native Bostonian I’m used to the complaints about Boston, about people saying it’s small, that the people are unfriendly, and that train closes too early. I’m proud of my city. I’ve walked down Hereford Street and Boylston Street probably a thousand times in my life. There’s something sacred about this time. I’m looking forward to crossing the finish line and putting the bombings squarely in the past.
See also
Kara Cooks and Eats 