Long Mile Home: Boston Under Attack, the City's Courageous Recovery, and the Epic Hunt for Justice Read Online Free Page A

marathon seemed to get more complex and more popular, a bigger test of his chops. He loved it, though. The pressure, he always said, was a privilege. McGillivray staged other road races and delivered motivational speeches. But the Boston Marathon was the sun in his solar system. April in Boston was unimaginable without him.
    He’d come from Medford, not far from where Krystle Campbell would grow up years later. He was the youngest of five in a working-class household that prized faith, honored commitments to the point of obsession, and taught that hard work could overcome anything. His father, a master electrician for a can company, kept a checklist inside the medicine cabinet where his children had to record their toothbrushing. When he was young, all McGillivray ever wanted to do was be an athlete. His genes had other ideas. He was short: five four by the time he was finished growing. It was a disqualifier, as a kid, on the courts and fields. He was chosen last for pickup games and cut from the high school basketball team. Right after the coach delivered the bad news, he challenged the team’s center to a game of one-on-one and beat him. He went home, found a black permanent marker, and wrote PLEASE GOD MAKE ME GROW on a piece of cardboard, which he hung above his bed with masking tape.
    McGillivray had difficulty accepting his perceived deficiency, but the adversity lit a fire inside him. He decided he would never be outworked, never accept that he couldn’t do something. The feelings of helpless anger became his fuel, which he soon funneled into running. It was the perfect sport, the ideal antidote to his experience with coaches and teams. As he would explain decades later, “No one can cut you from running.” In 1972, as a seventeen-year-old, he decided cockily that he would run the Boston Marathon. He informed his grandfather, Fred Eaton, with whom he was very close, and Eaton said he would be out on the course, near mile twenty-four, to watch for him. But McGillivray hadn’t bothered to train. He had no idea what he was doing, and he collapsed about two-thirds of the way through. Eaton waited for hours before going home. When they finally talked by phone, his grandfather told him to make this day a lesson: If you’re going to do something, do it correctly. He hadn’t earned the right to run the Boston Marathon. They made a pact. “You train for next year,” his grandfather told him. “And I’ll be there, too.”
    Two months later, his grandfather died of a heart attack on his way home from the grocery. McGillivray endeavored to keep his end of the bargain. He trained hard for the 1973 marathon. The day before, he came down with a brutal stomach virus. He entered the race but felt miserable. He was a sorry sight. His mother, seeing his condition, had tears streaming down her face when he passed her at the halfway point. He pushed on until he was near mile twenty-one. Then his body gave out. Defeated, he leaned against a wrought-iron fence. As it happened, the fence surrounded Boston’s Evergreen Cemetery, the very place they had buried his grandfather. McGillivray realized his grandfather had been right—he was there to watch him after all. McGillivray knew that he had to make good on their deal, so he picked himself up and finished the race. It was the first of what would be forty-one consecutive completed Boston Marathons, many of them coming hours after the official finish, after he had honored his race-directing duties.
    Over his life, McGillivray had worked in the toy department of a local discount store. He had been an actuary for a benefits firm. Once he had even interviewed to be a flight attendant, stuffing his platform shoes with tissues in an attempt to reach the minimum height requirement. But he had been right as a kid: He was destined for sports. After opening an athletic shoe and apparel store in Medford, he got into the race-management business, and that became his calling. His own athletic