Commentary: One Boston

“You will run again. Because that is what the people of Boston are made of,” said Barack Obama after the 2013 Boston Marathon bombings. “That’s why a bomb can’t beat us. That’s why we don’t hunker down. That’s why we don’t cower in fear,” he said at the peak of his speech, during an interfaith service at the Cathedral of the Holy Cross. “We carry on. We race. We strive. We build, and we work, and we love.”

Three years after the two Tsarnaev brothers bombed our beloved marathon, we still run. As a city, we took an incident that hurt us deeply and made us mourn and turned it into something positive.

We used the act of terror as motivation. We rose to our feet and proved to the whole country how strong Boston truly is and what it means to be “Boston Strong.”

The words spoken by Red Sox player David Ortiz after the bombings have always resonated with the city. It’s hard not to imagine Ortiz in the middle of the diamond  saying “Nobody is going to dictate our freedom. Stay strong.”

Now this year at the 120th running of the marathon, we saw a sign of hope and a showing that we are moving on as a city and proving everyone wrong.

Patrick Downes lost his left leg in the Boston Marathon bombings while cheering on runners at the finish line with his wife, Jessica who also lost a leg in the explosion.  Downes crossed that same finish line while wearing a prosthesis and holding his hands above his head, to become the first Boston bombing amputee to complete the entire marathon on foot. He reached the finish line at 2:46 p.m. in a time of 5:56:46.

“I ran with the city in my heart—Martin, Sean, Lingzi, Krystle,” Downes told WBZ News on Monday.

Marc Fucarile also completed the marathon on Monday after also losing his leg at the marathon finish line.

“Glad it’s over,” Fucarile said to WBZ. “It was amazing. Just the support. I did this for the people who ran for me (and) for my son to know that you know, it can be done.”

Other notable runners who completed the marathon included Bobby Carpenter, former Boston Bruin.

Boston College assistant baseball coach Greg Sullivan also was among the finishers. Sullivan ran for Team Frates and the Frates ALS Research and Support Fund.

Mississippi State football coach Dan Mullen also ran. Mullen is believed to be the first active football coach to run the marathon. Mullen wrote about his experience for Campus Rush saying, “imagine actually taking part in the Masters, Kentucky Derby or Olympic Opening Ceremonies. That’s what it felt like for me to run the Boston Marathon on Monday. I’d never even run so much as a neighborhood 5K in my life. The first time I’d ever picked up a bib number was at the Hynes Convention Center on Sunday evening.”

The marathon bombings changed how Bostonians viewed the marathon entirely. It’s a race that brings us together and for one day every year, we get to show how strong Boston truly is.