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Item Text: We arrived in Boston by bus from Maine and walked through town to the finish line to see a family member cross that line. We found a great observation spot on Boylston, just off the corner of Exeter, where we could see both the Jumbo tron and the finish line....we were under the French and German flags. Our family member was about 10 minutes from the finish and the first bomb went off. I looked up and saw smoke and heard glass falling. As I turned back toward my daughter, I heard the second blast to my right. My son grabbed us both and said to run - our only way out was to run down Exeter (barriers and the blasts prevented other escapes). We ran till Beacon street, then walked to Storrow and across the Charles River. We walked to Harvard before we stopped shaking. We knew we couldn't get back to Maine by bus without crossing through the city, not even sure the bus would run, and waited for hours in a Starbucks at Harvard Square for transportation back to Maine. Our family member got stopped in her race just after the Comm Ave "tunnel" and waited in a church to hear where her husband and sons were, as they, too, were at the finish, over by the med tent. Fortunately, our runner, her family, my son, daughter and I are all physically ok, but we are taking some time to process what we saw, heard, smelled...and it was too much....
Notes (acquisition):
This story was collected by the Boston Globe in the days immediately following the Boston Marathon Bombing. GlobeLab collected these anonymous stories on the Boston.com website and donated them to the Our Marathon Archive. We are grateful for this contribution, which gives insight into how Bostonians and visitors to the city understood the bombing events in their immediate aftermath.
