Ed Donohue was about to finish his 34th consecutive Boston Marathon, with a respectable time for a 73-year-old on gimpy knees.
And then his daughter Carolyn, tracking Monday’s race via her smartphone back in Chicago, stopped receiving automated Tweets from the last checkpoint in Boston.
“Dad stopped?” Carolyn asked her brother Eddie, in Whippany, NJ.
Then came news that two bombs had detonated near the finish line, followed by the longest two hours in the siblings’ lives.
When they finally connected with their father by phone, Ed Donohue recounted how he had rounded the final turn with the finish line in sight when he heard a bang and saw smoke and chaos.
“He said it was surreal, like a war zone,” said his son Eddie, who probably would have been cheering near the finish line with his two children at the fateful moment if not for business commitments in Jersey.
With nearly 26 grueling miles behind him, Ed Donohue, a retiree from an Atlanta suburb, and his wife added extra mileage by making a beeline to Cambridge and a friend’s car.
They left behind suitcases and Ed’s dog-earred gym bag–a good luck charm since 1980– at Boston’s Copley Plaza hotel.
The extended silence was excruciating for Eddie, who looked for his dad amidst the carnage on TV. Early reports said at least two people were killed and scores more were injured by the blasts.
“It’s not a good feeling,” said Eddie, 48, who jogs with the Morristown Running Company.
‘NOTHING’S SAFE AND SACRED’
Heather McDermott of the running store said quite a few customers and about a half-dozen regulars from her bi-weekly Morristown runs competed in Boston. All of them finished well ahead of the explosions and were unharmed, she said.
Heather, who also co-organizes the Super Hero Half Marathon, said the tragedy would not dissuade her from running in future races.
“It’s a horrible, horrible thing,” she said. “But it could happen at any major event, anywhere.”
Eddie Donohue said he was praying for the victims, and mourning a lifetime of fond memories at the Boston Marathon.
“It was like a pilgrimage. Every winter Dad starts training. Usually carloads of us would go up…There’s nothing safe and sacred anymore,” he said.
Eddie had to stay home this time to attend a Sunday planning session for the Long Branch Marathon. It might have saved his life, and the lives of his kids, Katie, 13, and Patrick, 10.
Just hours before Monday’s explosions in Boston, Eddie met with Newark officials to pitch a road race through the Newark Watershed.
The officials said no thanks–they were concerned about terrorism.
“I was saying, ‘What are the odds of that?'” Eddie said.
