Cleveland Heights Runner Stopped Short of Boston Marathon Bombing

“If I could have done more, I would have. I’m not a doctor or a nurse or anything, but I can get a couple of people back to their people,” said Bob McKenna.

He’s one of two men that Cleveland Heights runner Richard Lightbody called warm-hearted and generous after they helped him find his way back home after Monday’s explosions at the Boston Marathon.

Lightbody, a 65-year-old psychoanalyst and longtime Cleveland Heights resident, was only a few minutes from the finish line at the race when two bombs exploded, killing three people and injuring nearly 200 more.

“I heard two big explosions, which didn’t sound natural to me,” said Lightbody. He was about to round the last corner before the finish line, so he did not see the bombs.

Meanwhile, McKenna and his lifetime friend Chris King were heading away from the finish line. They were spectators, there to watch McKenna’s sister race. At 2:44 p.m., they were walking toward the finish when McKenna called a family member and found out he had just missed his sister’s finish.

So the two Boston-area residents turned around short of the finish line and headed toward the car. Moments later, the first bomb went off.

“You heard it, but you felt it, too,” said King. “You felt the percussion from it.” Then, he said, he heard another, and a scream, and within seconds — “not minutes,” he emphasized, “this was seconds,” — police and first responders swarmed the area on foot, bicycle, motorcycle and helicopter.

“I was close and I was watching all the people,” McKenna said, adding that today he wonders about a group of children he spotted leaving the spectator line to join a woman on the last stretch of the race just before the explosions. “I watched all those people run by and just had no idea they all ran into that thing.”

“Runners were kind of walking away in a daze,” said Lightbody. No one knew what happened, or where to go, but police herded runners away from the direction of the finish line.

As the crowd wandered down a boulevard, trying to figure out what to do, McKenna and King spotted Lightbody, wearing only shorts and a running top in the chilly weather. McKenna knew that runners are ushered straight to a medical tent at the finish line of the marathon for water, blankets and a quick health check. But for Lightbody, there was no tent, no water, no blanket.

The men gave Lightbody a cell phone to use and, with another runner, the group went to McKenna’s car for extra sweatshirts.

“They looked bewildered. They weren’t from town,” said King.

McKenna told the runners, who had left their money, IDs and other personal effects with friends at the finish line, that he would drive them where they needed to go.

Lightbody offered to pay the men for their kindness, but instead, the men gave him cash to hold him over until he got his belongings back and refused to give him an address to send a check.

“I told him, pay it forward,” said King. “We were just ready to help out. We didn’t care. You wouldn’t believe the bewildered faces on some people. They looked so lost. It was terrible.”

Lightbody, who’s been running for 35 years, said the experience will not deter him from running next year.

“I cannot imagine how they are going to make that safe for all the people all the time,” he said. But, he added, “I will be showing resolve and joining the Boston community next year.”

And when he does, King and McKenna promised, they will be there to cheer him on.