By Diane DiStefano
Contributing Writer

EDITOR’S NOTE: Norwich attorney Diane DiStefano was one of over 23,000 runners who competed in the Boston Marathon last week. DiStefano, who finished about half an hour before the two explosions, gives her first-person account of the events that followed the two explosions.

Last Monday, April 15, 2013, myself, my husband, and mu son were in Boston as I participated in the 117th running of the Boston Marathon. It was a picture-perfect day for a run with sunny skies and cool temperatures. I had a great run, until about 10 minutes later when so many lives would be forever altered.
When I crossed the finished line, I received my medal from one of the thousands of supportive volunteers, had my metallic heat blanket wrapped around me, and went in search of my family. After a few minutes of looking, I finally called them only to find out they were stuck on the subway or “T” as it is known in Boston. I told them to get off at the Arlington Station, two blocks away from the finish line, and that I would meet them there. I hobbled to the Arlington T station and waited for their arrival. Apparently, the trains were all delayed due to the large number of people in Boston for the marathon. They finally arrived and we prepared to get on to go back to our car, a few T stops away.
As we were waiting, the transit worker came through and informed everyone that there had been an emergency, and they needed to evacuate the station. He told everyone they must go up to the street level. We truly did not think much of it, and followed hundreds of people up to the street. It was immediately apparent that something had gone horribly wrong.
Throngs of people were practically running in all directions. The look in their eyes was one I will never forget: A mixture of disbelief, terror, and shock. Helicopters were flying overhead, and numerous police vehicles were flying by; lights and sirens going.
I stopped a man walking by with his finisher medal on, and asked him what had happened. He looked at me, with his lip quivering and barely holding back tears. He said “there were explosions at the finish line, there are blood and limbs everywhere.” I asked him if lives had been, lost and he replied that from what he saw, people must have died. He then started sobbing and said he had to find his family. I apologized for keeping him and turned to tell my family what he said.
My husband then got on the phone with our office to try to figure out what was happening. I heard him say “Can you please tell me what terrorist attack we’re in the middle of?” Shortly thereafter, cell service was cut off as they initially thought the bombs had been detonated by cell phones. We were trapped in a strange city, no transportation back to our car, no cell phone service, and just stood on the street in the midst of pandemonium. The worst part is that you did not know which way to go. Two bombs had gone off; were you heading to safety or toward more danger?
We moved down the street where I approached random strangers offering them cash to drive us back to our car. No one would get in their vehicles pointing to the traffic backed up for miles, the speeding emergency vehicles, and chaos in the streets. We stopped at a downtown hotel and asked the doorman to hail us a cab. He told us he had called a cab for a guest 30 minutes ago, and it still had not arrived. Finally, my husband managed to use the GPS on his phone and find directions back to our car. The parking garage where they had parked was 2 1/2 miles from where we were. I told them “I just ran 26 miles, I can certainly walk 2 1/2 miles.”
We set out on foot, me still in my race clothes, soaking wet with a full layer of white salt covering my face from the sweat. We wandered the streets of Boston, still trying to reconcile what had happened and anxiously trying to find our car. Boston is challenging to maneuver on a good day, on this day it seemed impossible. We finally reached our car after about two hours, and immediately got on the road listening to the radio as we went. Just as we left the city, it was announced that Logan Airport was closing.
I was never so glad to be leaving some place in my life. We stopped at a rest stop on the Mass Turnpike, which had the news on. We stood glued to the television with many others, watching the scene from the first bomb going off. Still raw physically from the marathon, I attempted to eat something, but could not get the food down. I just wanted to get home, back to Norwich, back to safety.
I tried to sleep in the car, but saw images of the finish line every time I closed my eyes. It would be several days before any quality sleep would come. A thousand things ran through my mind, some rational, some not. I wondered what would have happened if I had started the race later and consequently finished later. I wondered what would have happened if the T had not been delayed, and my family had made it to the finish line. I wondered if I had passed the bombers or stood next to them at the T station closest to the finish line. I sobbed as I wondered what would have happened if my family was injured because I chose to participate in this marathon.
There are so many “what ifs” that make this experience a close one. My husband and son had watched the marathon at Heartbreak Hill, mile 21 of the race. My son then suggested to my husband that they go hang out at the finish line and wait for me and watch the runners. They never made it there, Thank God.
Our start time was determined by our qualifying time for the race. If my qualifying time had been just one minute slower, I would have been in a different wave of runners that started later than I did, running straight through the explosion. The list goes on and on.
The Boston Marathon is the holy grail of running. It is the oldest marathon in the United States and 2013 marked the most stringent qualifying times ever. Some people spend years trying to achieve their Boston qualifying time. Then once you qualify, you spend months in cold-weather training, paying careful attention to the difficult hills that come toward the end of the marathon. Only 75 percent of the 23,000-plus runners that started the marathon were able to finish. That’s over 6,000 people that were diverted at mile 25.5, less than one full mile from the finish. They did not get to cross the finish line, have no official finish time, and no finisher medal. While I know this is small under the circumstances, it is yet another example of what two sick, selfish individuals accomplished that day. They robbed innocent people of lives, limbs and the opportunity to fulfill a dream. Yes, I’m angry. I have had a full range of emotions since that day, but seem to fluctuate mostly between sadness and anger. I have shed many tears since last Monday. As I stood sobbing in my husband’s arms in the middle of Boston, a young woman, a stranger, handed me a package of tissues. I have heard stories of great heroism in the aftermath of the explosions. In the middle of all this evil, there was goodness.
I am grateful I finished, although it was not until about 8 p.m. that night when we were in the car that I thought to ask my son what my time was for the marathon. I am grateful my family is safe, and extremely proud of them for holding it together when I all but fell apart on the street. I am so very grateful for all the people that were concerned about our safety, and the few that actually offered to come get us out of Boston. Finally, I am grateful for our small town of Norwich and the safety and security it offers. I know many say that we must return to Boston at next year’s marathon to show we will not live in fear. To those of you planning to do that, I say good for you, but I’m not going back. I will stick to small, local runs - at least for now.
In time we will all heal, as runners, as family members, as people, as a nation.