THE STRONG SURVIVOR
After losing leg in Boston Marathon bombings, Patrick Downes is ready to run it 3 years later
CHESTNUT HILL, Mass. — There is a memorial labyrinth that runs along the Boston Marathon route, down a gentle slope from the sign that marks Mile 21 and the final crest of Heartbreak Hill, the race’s most trying stretch. It sits between a line of trees and The Burns Library, a Gothic Revival structure, on Boston College’s campus, and commemorates the 22 alumni lost in the attacks of September 11, 2001. A plaque by the path’s entry marks its dedication date, and Patrick Downes, a member of the class of 2005, recalls the ceremony. It was 2003, on the second anniversary of the terrorist attacks. He was a junior then. A bagpiper from the Boston Fire Department played and university president Rev. William P. Leahy led a 20-minute prayer service. Downes, dressed in a blue shirt and gold tie, read the name of William Minardi, his uncle’s best friend, who worked for Cantor Fitzgerald as a broker. Leahy sprinkled holy water on what he referred to as a perpetual place of remembrance. “The many twists and turns are so like the joys and the struggles of our lives,” Leahy said. “We do not know where each turn in the path will lead us.” Downes, now 32, notes that the meditative space holds deep meaning for him. He struggled past the labyrinth on Marathon Monday in 2005 as a runner with a bib number, and graduated five weeks later. His compass spun south for work at Georgetown Prep, and to The Envoy, the Washington, D.C. apartment building where he met his wife, Jessica Kensky, a sweaty nurse fresh off a January run. They later trekked north to Boston, eventually marrying and spinning the compass once more. This time it faced west as he finished up his doctoral program in clinical psychology. Set to head for her native California, they took in the marathon by the finish line on Boylston Street on April 15, 2013. Nearly a decade after he honored Minardi’s life, two backpack bombs exploded. A terror attack orchestrated by the Tsarnaev brothers left Downes writhing in pain at a blast site. His wife, on fire, wrapped a tourniquet around his maimed left leg. She heard what she later described as “animalistic screams.” Both of her legs were injured. Hurried to separate hospitals, they grasped for answers during a grave period that included a lockdown of the city, a manhunt and the ambush murder of officer Sean Collier. They tried to square survival with the searing deaths of Collier, Martin Richard, Krystle Marie Campbell and Lu Lingzi.
“I have very little recollection from when the bombs went off, but as Jess has told me, it was just unspeakable sights and fear,” he says. “All these everyday people became heroes. I’ll never know how to say thank you to them.”
He is finding ways as he readies to stride past the stone labyrinth in the 120th Boston Marathon Monday. This run brings new meaning. He is an amputee; his wife is a double amputee. Granted permission from the Department of Defense, they are patients at Walter Reed Medical Center in Bethesda, Md., and Downes trains at the Military Advanced Training Center, slipping on a black sleeve attached to a Flex-Run blade that his prosthetist recommended. Known for a confident gait as an undergraduate, there are constant adjustments, both in therapy sessions and with aligning their equipment’s sockets. His finishes at the Disney Half Marathon and the Hope & Possibility race, a five-miler in Central Park, serve as inspiration that he can endure a marathon’s distance. He holds up the experience of watching Jess walk the whole Central Park route last June as the best progress. “Monumental,” he says. The return to the marathon as a runner — he rode with his wife on hand cycles the last two years — comes at a unique time. He is raising funds to endow the BC Strong Scholarship for students with physical disabilities and financial need at his alma mater. His supporters are more than halfway to the necessary $250,000, and he will be joined by his brother, Brendan, sister-in-law, Sarah, classmate, Tom Treacy and fellow amputee, P.J. Ganem, a retired Marine. In training, Downes ran as many as 20 miles to prepare. He intends to cross the finish in six hours or less.
“When I get too cocky, Jess reminds me that she smoked me in 2005,” he said. “She ran as a bandit and beat my time by about an hour.”
Family members and friends plan to fan out across the course as he pushes past milestones. On a light pole by Boston College’s campus, there is a series of hearts designed in a blue and gold color sequence. The sign encourages all to “B26.2Strong.” The 9/11 plaque is 20 yards away; a scripture passage is inscribed in stone: They will soar as with Eagles’ wings They will run and not grow weary Walk and not grow faint
lll “Hard to believe it has been three years,” says Treacy, the mutual friend who introduced Patrick and Jessica. He walks into a Starbucks on the corner of 23rd St. and Third Ave. by Gramercy Park, and grabs a cup of oatmeal. He spreads blueberries and sprinkles brown sugar. He is a regular runner, but increased his mileage in late February when he learned via an e-mail that the BC Strong scholarship organizers still needed a runner to raise $10,000 and take on the marathon with Downes. He responded, “I can commit to both of those, 100%.”
Treacy traces his relationship with Downes back to college, including experiences shared abroad in Galway and London. He was also one of the first friends to visit and converse with Downes in person following the attacks. Treacy and Michael Petit, another alum, traveled up to Boston from New York via Amtrak on the Friday following the bombings. They made it to Providence’s station, but were stopped there. The city of Boston cut off all transportation into the Hub, and Treacy wound up waiting the delay out with Petit at a Joe’s American Bar and Grill. Boston’s lockdown was not lifted until nighttime when Tsarnaev was apprehended, and a friend drove down to retrieve them. The next day, Treacy made it to Downes’ room at Beth Israel Deaconess Hospital. They did not talk about the attack at first. Downes, a Red Sox fan, trained his attention on the afternoon game against the Royals at Fenway Park. He watched on a tiny television screen;