Time to embrace loved ones:
Shaken runners from Ottawa return home,
Before the flight from Boston arrived at the Ottawa Airport Tuesday evening, Gerri Wilkes stood waiting for her daughter. Hard to miss even from afar, Wilkes held a large sign that said, “Grateful to have you home!”
Wilkes already knew her daughter, Kailey McLachlan, was not hurt in the explosions in Boston.
“I was very lucky,” Wilkes said of her experience that day as a mother, in that she knew right from the outset frightening news cycle that her daughter, who had already finished the race, was okay.
At the same time, even though she knew rationally that her daughter was safe, the sight of her couldn’t come soon enough. Wilkes was in an important meeting at work at 5:30 when she told her boss, “I’m really sorry, I have to leave right now. I have to go put my arms around my daughter.”
It was a huge relief when she actually did.
McLachlan, 32, was happy to see her parents, her brother and her boyfriend, who all came to the airport to greet her.
She said she had finished the race, rested and was headed back to the finish line again when the bombs exploded.
“We were about to go back to cheer on the racers,” she said.
McLachlan said that as she was leaving Boston, security officials at Logan Airport interviewed her and all other marathoners.
“They’re just trying so hard to see if anyone has seen anything,” she said.
Kaireen Patton, 42, said she knew some runners were going back to the bombing scene Tuesday morning but she couldn’t bring herself to do it before her flight back to Ottawa.
Instead, she left for the airport at about 10:15 a.m. to make sure she had enough time to deal with enhanced security after the bombings.
“I honestly did not want to see it. It was heartbreaking to watch,” she said. “One of my friends watched the explosion happen and it shattered her.”
Patton said she felt selfish leaving her two young children at home in Ottawa with her husband, but it turned out to be the best possible scenario.
“I wouldn’t have wanted to try to explain this to my kids,” she said. “The whole thing is just heartbreaking.”
Julie Drury, 41, wanted to get out of Boston as quickly as possible.
Hotels were being evacuated, she didn’t know if there were other bombs, and buildings were on lockdown, Drury said.
“I think we got out right under the wire before they shut down the inner core of Boston,” she said.
Emergency vehicles sped past Drury and her friends as they headed out of the city.
The three women were horrified to learn on the radio that three people had died, including an eightyear-old boy.
“Three moms in the car driving home to our children who are all under the age of 10,” she said. “Absolutely horrified. And disgust. “Who does this? Who does this?” When they got to the border, FBI and the state police officers asked them questions, shone a flashlight in their car and opened the trunk.
Once they got on to Canadian soil, the three women exhaled.
When Drury got home, she tightly held her eight-year-old son, Jack, and they both cried.
Jack knew that a boy his age had died in the blast.
Her five-year-old daughter, Kate, was too young to understand what happened.
On Tuesday, at her home in Ottawa, Drury wore her Boston race shirt to show support for the vic- tims of the bombing. Jack, wore a Boston race shirt to school. “We’re safe. It’s just a matter of processing now and letting a few days goes by. It’s all fresh,” she said.
Ottawa runner Sheri McCready did go to the bomb scene Tuesday and, she said, she embraced an almost total stranger.
McCready, 46, wasn’t sure why she went back, but when she saw a runner she met the day before, it seemed natural to give her a hug.
Other runners had the same idea to gather near the finish line Tues- day and share their stories from the race that ended in tragedy. “It’s just people wanting to be closer, I think,” McCready said in a phone interview from Boston. “It pulled people together.”
McCready and her husband were scheduled to fly out of Boston to Ogdensburg, N.Y., on Tuesday for the first leg of their trip home. They had wanted to stay an extra day to enjoy the city after the marathon.
The street that normally bubbled with excited runners the day after the marathon was eerily quiet and the mood was sombre.
The medals given to those who finished the race were nowhere in sight.
“To wear a medal now, it just seems wrong,” McCready said in a shaky voice.
Every other year, Boylston Street was pristine the day after the race. Crews worked through the night to clean up the mess.
It seemed bizarre on Tuesday to see garbage, debris and blood covering the normally spotless street, McCready said.
The marathon McCready ran Monday with her husband, Steve, was her 13th in Boston.
McCready had a cornea transport in January and didn’t start her marathon training until February. She thought she’d be lucky to finish in four hours, but she ended with a time of 3:43.
“If I had had the day I expected, I would have been right there when the blast occurred,” she said. “For whatever reason, I had wings on my feet.”
McCready was fetching her race bag from a bus when she heard the explosion.
She looked down the street and all she could see was smoke.
McCready found her husband, and together they tried to get on the subway. It was shut down. “By then, we had already found out what had happened,” McCready said. “It was just horrible.”