In the wider Greater Boston area, 2013 will be remembered as the year in which our sense of security would be shaken by an attack on one of our most treasured local events, the Boston Marathon, which left four people dead and dozens of others seriously injured.
As with most other Massachusetts cities and towns, Marblehead had residents who were profoundly, personally affected by the bombings.
The brother of Marblehead resident Jacie Clowery, Jarrod, can be seen in a photo near the Marathon finish line, near where one of the bombs was detonated. Also in the photo are bombing suspect 19-year-old Dzhokhar Tsarnaev and the youngest of the bombing victims, 8-year-old Martin Richard.
A series of surgeries would remove from Jarrod Clowery 37 pieces of shrapnel, including nails, BBs and ball bearings, while other bomb remnants remained inside him. He suffered third-degree burns to his back and flash burns on his face, arms and legs, along with the loss of 85 percent of his hearing.
But as Jarrod told First Lady Michelle Obama, who visited with him and other bombing victims at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, “I’m in great shape. Pray for my three friends. They have it much rougher than me.” Three of Jarrod’s friends each lost legs in the blast.
The National Grand Bank set up an account to receive funds to help Jarrod and his family, and nearly $24,000 was donated through the Jarrod Clowery Recovery Fund website, gofundme.com/2nphz4.
Marblehead also had a number of runners in the race, including Olympic bronze medalist Shalane Flanagan, whose celebration of being the first American woman to finish the race fourth overall in the women’s field was cut short by the horrible events that ensued.
Closer to the finish line was Marblehead High School junior varsity hockey coach Brian Donovan. Running his second Boston Marathon on behalf of Grassroots Soccer, a charity founded by former “Survivor” winner Ethan Zohn, Donovan was not out for performance and thus approached the finish line about 35 minutes slower than his previous run, placing him near the finish line at the fateful 4:03 mark. While Donovan appeared alongside Zohn on Katie Couric’s daytime talk show the following day, it was his involuntary appearance on news footage of one of the blasts that proved far more surreal and unsettling.
In a letter occasioned by being featured in Gatehouse Media New England’s “100 Days” project, Donovan wrote a letter seeking to redirect attention where he felt it was deserved: on the volunteers who rendered aid and helped usher exhausted and bewildered race participants to safety.
“I had the unfortunate experience of being a few seconds beyond the first explosion,” he wrote. “I, like thousands of other runners, benefitted from the courage and clear-headed thinking of the many volunteers at the finish.”
Among those volunteers, Donovan noted, were his son’s first-grade teacher, Diane Gora, and his gym teacher, Eric Fargo.
“Ms. Gora not only stayed to help at the race late into the evening but returned in subsequent days to offer her assistance,” he wrote. “These attributes of selfless giving, empathy and compassion are qualities that are laudable and we cannot ask for better examples in our community. We are truly lucky that our children will have the opportunity to learn these traits from them.”
As many of this year’s runners have, Donovan is vowing to be in Hopkinton next Patriots Day to be part of what is likely to be a larger-than-usual field for the 2014 Boston Marathon.
Also near the finish line at the time of the explosions was Marbleheader Leslie Bailey,who was sitting in the Boylston Street bleachers waiting to cheer her husband, Damian, across the finish line in his second Boston Marathon. Since surviving a 2010 blood-cancer diagnosis, Damian has raised $70,000 for the Leukemia Lymphoma Society, a cause that is now doubly personal, given that his wife had been diagnosed with a blood cancer early in 2013.
The bombing, said Leslie, marred what was meant to be “a beautiful day, a day of celebration.”
Somehow, the Baileys were able to find each other after about 45 minutes amid the pandemonium and eventually made their way back to Marblehead to hug their two young children.
In response to the attacks, some $71.3 million in donations flooded into the coffers of The One Fund, $12,500 of that figure from the sales of 5,000 bracelets by Marblehead teen Cole Garaventi.
“People were grateful for Cole’s efforts because they gave them an opportunity to do something to help,” said Bonnie Garaventi, Cole’s mother noted. “His project was easy to do, accessible and allowed others to get involved on a local level.”
Cole’s efforts earned him an invite from a grateful Gov. Deval Patrick, which Cole called an “amazing experience,” said Cole.
Marblehead also sent two officers, Lt. Jon Lunt and Chuck Sinclair, to assist with the North Eastern Massachusetts Law Enforcement Council’s response to the attacks.
In the early part of the week, Lunt and Sinclair provided security in high-traffic areas in Boston, first at Faneuil Hall and then on Causeway Street near the Boston Garden during the April 17 Bruins game and a concert the following night.
But then on Thursday night, three days after the bombings, the FBI released photos and video of the two bombing suspects. Lunt and Sinclair were on duty when word came over the radio about the fatal shooting of MIT police officer Sean Collier and the ensuing chase and firefight between the suspects and police in which a transit officer, Richard Donohue Jr., was injured, and the older of the two suspects, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, was killed.
Lunt and Sinclair went to Watertown to assist in the pursuit of Tamerlan’s 19-year-old brother, Dzhokhar, at one point providing cover for SWAT teams as they undertook a painstaking door-to-door search of the area. When Dzhokhar was eventually found hiding in a boat, Lunt and Sinclair were about 100 yards away, Lunt explained.
Lunt said that he was pleased he and his fellow officers were able to provide “some sense of closure for the families” of the victims.