Remembering The Boston Marathon Bombing, Nine Years Later

John Simmons | April 15, 2022
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April 15th is tax day, but as a born and bred New Englander and Boston sports fan, it carries a little extra meaning.

Nine years ago today, the City of Boston was celebrating Patriot's Day. This holiday, which is unique to Massachusetts, commemorates the battles of Lexington and Concord on April 19, 1775, which began the War for American Independence. It is celebrated on the third Monday of every April and held in high esteem by the citizens of the Bay State, with all of Massachusetts getting a day off work, the running of the Boston Marathon taking place, and the Boston Red Sox holding a game with the first pitch at 11:10 each year.

But on that Monday, a day of celebration was turned into chaos when two men, Tamerlan Tsarnaev and his younger brother, Dzhokhar, planted two bombs at the finish line of the marathon, killing three spectators and injuring 260 others.

I remember sitting with my parents and siblings watching the end of the Red Sox game (a 3-2 win over the Tampa Bay Rays) and then tuning into local news and seeing the horrific story unfold. Almost instantly, the city shut down all flights (affecting my visiting uncle's travel plans to go home to Florida), and for the next four days, the city was in turmoil as the FBI and local forces rushed to find the men who pulled off this brutal act of domestic terrorism.

On April 18th, a shootout in Watertown resulted in the death of Tamerlan, and on the 19th, multiple Boston communities were issued a shelter-in-place order and all public transit was shut down while they searched for his younger brother. At 8:46 p.m., the FBI apprehended Dzokhar in Watertown, thus ending one of the most dramatic manhunts in recent memory.

While every New Englander -- and American -- rejoiced when the two men were caught, there was a sense of brokenness in the aftermath of the event. A city was shaken, families were forever altered, and hundreds of people left the marathon with life-altering injuries.

We were suddenly left to wonder, could we trust that the little things we take for granted would still be there tomorrow? Could we truly be free from fear when such heinous acts threatened our everyday security?

The answer for that is the same today as it was nine years ago, summed up by Red Sox legend David Ortiz.

This speech not only became a moment of inspiration for me, but for a whole region. New Englanders everywhere were looking for a spark of hope in the face of such a gruesome tragedy, and that is what Ortiz delivered in the most Boston way possible.

Ortiz's words provide a lesson for all of us even almost a decade later. When terror strikes and threatens your freedoms, fight back with all the intensity you've got. Whether it's a city searching for murderers, states pushing back against vaccine mandates that throttle our freedoms, or just working for a better future for your local towns, you must fight back against any force that threatens to dictate freedom and our fading American way of life. It may not be pretty, it might be difficult, and it might be long. The price of freedom is always high, but it is always worth it, something the men who fought at Lexington and Concord completely understood. 

And that is something this generation must realize too.

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