"Tom Meagher has seen thousands of accomplishments come to fruition at the Boston Marathon finish line.
The image of watching marathon bombing survivor Celeste Corcoran cross the famed Boylston Street strip of real estate is one that has stuck with the otherwise down-to-business Meagher, who has spent 19 years as the race’s finish line coordinator. For here was Corcoran, a woman who lost both of her lower limbs below the knees in the 2013 blasts, running on a pair of prosthetic legs, joining her sister and daughter in a one-block sprint, from Exeter Street to Meagher’s longtime post at the site of such horror only one year prior.
Meagher had first met Corcoran at the annual FBI Awards Presentation the previous December, and when he greeted her once again at the finish line, where Meagher has met every Boston Marathon winner since 1997, this place now allowed to resume as a source of inspiration, he had only one thing to tell her.
“You’re the most courageous person I have ever met in my entire life,” he said.
“It was emotional for me to see her courage, her strength, to do what she did that day.”
The emotional levels of the Boston Marathon’s triumphant 2014 return were, clearly, the one aspect that ran from the norm for Meagher in last year’s preparations, which involve making sure that everything between Exeter and Dartmouth Streets functions the way its supposed to during the annual running of the race. Now, two years removed from the terror of that April 15, he’s even more immersed into his insistence to stay the course.
But the moments, they kept popping up in 2015. Like when bombing survivor Rebekah Gregory ran the final 3 1/2 miles of Monday’s race on a prosthetic leg. When women’s wheelchair winner Tatyana McFadden gave her golden winner’s wreath to the family of eight-year-old bombing victim Martin Richard.
“There still obviously will be, for a lot of people, memories of two years ago,” Meagher said. “You can move beyond that stuff in your life, as I have, but there’s always that little something that will trigger a little emotion in you.”
As far as the particulars are concerned, the 2015 Boston Marathon ran smoothly from Meagher’s perspective at the finish line, despite a cold, wet day that made the final 90 minutes a pretty “miserable” atmosphere amidst the elation.
“I thought the athletes performed very, very well under the circumstances,” he said, noting that there wasn’t a high number of hypothermia cases and no hospital visits required due to the conditions. “So, that’s pretty damned good. There’s always a fear when you get the cold and the rain that you’re going to have a hypothermia situation, and then maybe a dehydration situation. People are wet and cold, they don’t think maybe of drinking water.”
Meagher said that he’s satisfied when he gets the thumbs up from his bosses at the Boston Athletic Association for a job well done, another year in the books crowning champions, memories, and the inspiration that the Boston Marathon finish line with which has always been noted.
“Everything happened the way it should happen, which is good."
The scars? The gory images many of us can’t escape from that day two years ago? The 69-year-old Meagher doesn’t allow them to get in the way, even after the traumatic events he experienced on the front line in 2013.
“Clearly, when the bomb went off, I ran to assist a runner that had gotten knocked down, and when I turned to my right to look on the sidewalk, there was a photographer right next to me,” he said. “I was actually in the picture that made Sports Illustrated with the policeman and the knocked-down runner, but they cropped me out of it. Which is fine. This picture showed me looking at the sidewalk, and you can see the orange glow of the second bomb going off. It was in the [Boston] Globe and it actually went worldwide. But what I saw was horrific.
“But I think the most lasting thing with me, was seeing on a stretcher in a very short span of time, the young lady from Medford [Krystle Campbell] being taken out. An EMT was doing CPR and the thought entered my mind immediately, ‘She’s dead.’ And she was dead. That probably sticks with me.
“The other stuff that I saw is gone. I’ve never had any nightmares, I don’t go down and stand in that spot and start crying or get emotional. I’ve put it behind me. For me, it’s all about moving on with my life. I was in a horrific situation, there’s nothing I could do about it. But I have to move on with my life, I have to. I can’t be dwelling on it, the horror that I saw that day.”
Meagher was a track and field star for Boston College, where he also coached and got into officiating. He was a coach at Catholic Memorial High School, where he still serves a part-time role as assistant dean of discipline. Running is in his blood, but so is a sense of what it takes to overcome. He never made a pilgrimage to the finish line in the months following the bombings, as thousands of others did in search of some cathartic moment. At the insistence of a former student of his, he met with a Boston Police trauma counselor, but mostly forged ahead on his own. He came back a year later, with everybody else to a Boylston Street finish line forever changed. When there was a race to run and when he had a job to do.
It was simply his office for another year. Maybe with a little twinge of heartache to decorate the spot this time around.
“The preparations from my perspective on the street really didn’t change at all,” he said. “The same police presence, the same BAA presence. The component that changed was the emotional levels went way over the top. Because it was clearly a very emotional day. It was emotional on Saturday when they did the survivor’s family/walk/run for one mile. It was emotional on Marathon day, you know, at 2:49 [p.m.] it was emotional.
“I knew it was going to get emotional, and probably for a couple times on Saturday and then again on Monday when I saw Celeste Corcoran I did get emotional. But other than that, business as usual.”
That business includes making sure that security is air-tight. On Marathon morning, Meagher meets with the the chief of security for race sponsor John Hancock and Kevin Cummings, security chief for the Boston Athletic Association. They go over any last-minute details that may occur at the finish line, making sure the area surrounding it secure, before the Boston Police come along with a bomb-sniffing dog, which checks the secured part of finish area including the bleachers, timing area, computerized platform, speaker system, photo bridge and anything else structural.
“So as I’ve told people, even before two years ago, I feel very secure where I am.” he said. “Because they’ve already been through there and checked everything.”
Besides the marathon, he remains extremely involved in the sport of running. Recently, he served as starter at the U.S. Olympic trials in Oregon, and last year the World Junior Championships, also in Oregon, the first time they had been held in the United States.
“I know how to handle athletes at that level because I’ve had experience doing it,” he said. “I’m very fortunate now that when there’s a big meet in America, when I apply for it, I get selected.”
At the Boston Marathon finish line, the athletes filter in at all different levels, from the elite field, to thousands that finish in their wake, to the stragglers and the hanger-ons. But for the past five years, Meagher has also ridden in the annual Pan-Mass Challenge for children with cancer, so when he sees runners cross the finish line, with their cause on their sleeves, backs, and shoes, he admits, even he, does allow himself to succumb to the moment. “That puts me over the top a little bit,” he said.
But Meagher’s emotion is secondary to finishing his annual task, that when the commotion dies down, that he can head into the Copley hospitality room, put his feet up, and have a cold beer. Only then will he allow himself to sit satisfied with his annual goal.
“That I get it right,” he said. “That’s all that counts. At the end, when all the TV production people, and the winners come in and we’ve nailed it, and we get it right, and my bosses give me a thumbs up. That’s all I need. That’s all I want. I don’t want accolades, I don’t need my picture in the paper, I don’t need to be interviewed on television, I just want to get it right.”"
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