- Best Running Shoes 2025 Health - Injuries, memorials honoring the victims have been installed in two locations involved in the tragedy.
- Nutrition - Weight Loss Pablo Eduardo to create the sculptures.
Memorials honoring the victims of the tragic events that took place at the 2013 Boston Marathon, where three civilians were killed along with two officers who attempted to detain the perpetrators, were officially officially installed in two locations on Boylston Street this week.
The idea for a memorial began in 2015 when the families of 29-year-old Krystle Campbell, 23-year-old Lu Lingzi, and 8-year-old Martin Richard met with city officials to discuss a way to remember and honor their lost loved ones.
World-renowned artists then met with the families to share their ideas. In 2015, the families picked Pablo Eduardo, who had previously created sculptures for the city.
“We had a hard conversation about how do you pull people together for something like this,” Chief of Operations for the City of Boston Patrick Brophy told Runner’s World. “We worked through the process about what the families would like to see and how they would like their loved one remembered, and they all unanimously chose Eduardo, who really spoke to all of the families in the room about his idea.”
Though the initial design went through changes throughout the process, Eduardo worked with the families to create what now sits at two sites along Boylston Street.
The memorials’ centerpieces are bronze spires that stand 17- to 21-feet tall with glass tubing in the center that project light at night. These are framed by two cherry trees, which will bloom around the time of the anniversary each year.
The two memorials seek to personally remember the lives of each of the five people killed throughout the tragedy.
At the center of the bombing sites near the finish line, markers made of granite—which were sourced from sites meaningful to each victim—signify the lives lost.
For Campbell, granite was sourced from Spectacle Island, Massachusetts, off the coast of Boston, where she worked at a children’s camp at a teenager. Other granite was sourced from Franklin Park in the Dorchester neighborhood of Boston, where Richard lived for eight years, and from a bridge at Boston University, where Lingzu was a graduate student at the time of her death.
Also at the sites are bronze bricks that include the names of MIT Police Officer Sean Collier, who was ambushed by the bombers on April 18, and Boston Police Officer Dennis Simmonds, who died about a year after sustaining injuries during the Watertown, Massachusetts, shootout. The bricks also include a bronzed version of their badges.
A poet laureate worked with the families to create a poem that is split between both sites, that reads, “All we have lost is brightly lost,” and “Let us climb, now, the road to hope.”
“These are moving words,” said Brophy, who has run the marathon since 2011, including during the bombings in 2013. “It is echoed in the materials, and the materials fit into the streetscape of one of the busier thoroughfares in Boston that is a place of excitement on Patriots’ Day, and now also a space people can reflect.”
The memorials were originally scheduled to be installed by the fifth anniversary of the bombings in 2018; however, concerns raised by the family, which have since been addressed, delayed the installation.
Now that the memorial stands, Brophy hopes that runners, Bostonians, and visitors alike will reflect and remember the day and the lives lost.
“As a lifelong Bostonian, the memorial brings up a myriad of emotions,” he said. “It’s sad that it happened. It creates a little anger when you think of the innocent lives lost there. It provides hope that the city comforted the families of those who were lost and those who were injured. It will remember Boston’s perseverance, the city’s ability to take care of its own, and that we will forever own the finish line, and this horrific act will never diminish that, and the three people that lose their lives and those officers will be remembered for generations to come.”
Health - Injuries Runner’s World and Bicycling, and he specializes in writing and editing human interest pieces while also covering health, wellness, gear, and fitness for the brand. His work has previously been published in Men’s Health.
