TORONTO – Steve Knight was wiping tears from his eyes hours before he even heard the explosions on Boylston Street.
It was the Canadian’s first time attending the Boston Marathon, after moving to Boston nearly three years ago. He wasn’t conquering the 26.2-mile marathon but he spent hours following the runners.
It was an emotional day, not because of the bombings that shook the east coast city but because of the acts of kindness that surrounded him.
While the marathon has been marred by the tragic news of the explosion, Knight is sharing his experience to shed light on the good he witnessed that afternoon. The senior vascular technologist was born in Toronto and raised in Waterloo, Ont.
During the marathon, runners were circling around to help others who were struggling within the final yards of the finish line. They were cheered on by throngs of supporters, clapping and encouraging the marathoners to keep trudging on.
Knight remembers the runners’ smiling faces, donning solar blankets to keep them warm, saying it looked like they were wearing capes. At the time, he was between the sites of where the two explosions took place.
By another tent past the finish line, runners who completed the race were reunited with their loved ones holding signs, feeding them snacks and water, hugging and posing for pictures.
“There was this great camaraderie for people who accomplished this amazing feat,” Knight recalled.
“It was very emotional seeing them reacquainted with their families.”
Read more: The heroes of the Boston Marathon explosion
An inspired Knight, who said he is relatively fit with “two good hips,” even considered signing up for smaller marathons.
“I was inspired to seriously consider getting into shape enough to run a marathon somewhere. I saw how fatigued some (runners) were, but they had huge smiles on their faces. It made me realize how huge of an accomplishment it is to overcome the physical challenge,” he said.
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Knight left the race to meet his cousin Betty Glover, 68, who ran the 5-kilometre race the day before. She completed the 26.2-mile marathon last year: “It’s fun to feel like a rock star for a few hours,” she told him. In 2012, neighbours ran their garden hoses and sprinklers for marathoners to run through so they could stay cool in the heat.
The pair headed back to the finish line on Boylston Street. They were just two blocks away when they heard the first explosion just before 3 p.m.
It sounded like a cannon setting off, it had concussive force, strong enough to knock people over, Knight said.
His first thought was that the marathon was holding a celebration.
“But it didn’t make sense because it was four hours into the race,” Knight said.
“Then I heard the second boom and I knew that something very terrible was happening.”
Everyone froze on the streets of Boylston, unsure of what to do, unsure of what had just happened. Knight said he wanted to believe there was a reasonable explanation, a gas leak, for example.
The smoke made its way over shrouding what was ahead.
Police quickly cordoned off Boylston Street, pushing spectators onto parallel roads.
“We were hopeful it wasn’t something really awful … then we started seeing people coming down the side streets crying and very upset from what they had seen,” Knight said.
Knight and Glover couldn’t make any phone calls out, but they resent texts and emails to family members to let them know they were okay. His son, an analyst in New York City, fed him updates as the news of what transpired trickled in.
As police kept pushing the cordoned off areas further back, they were led to an intersection where hundreds of runners who hadn’t completed the race were held.
Stopped in their tracks, the runners hadn’t had medical check-ups, access to water and fruit or solar blankets to keep them warm like their counterparts who finished the marathon before the explosions.
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“It was cold. I felt sorry for them,” Knight said.
That’s when he saw people running toward them, carrying cases of water, snacks and oversized garbage bags to act as blankets. Knight guesses these Good Samaritans were flooding out of restaurants, corner stores, shops and their homes.
“I saw people with pitchers of water coming of their houses, people taking off coats and literally giving them to others, loaning their phones to others to help them get in touch with loved ones,” Knight recalled.
“They were offering clothing to absolute strangers as if they didn’t care to ever see it again.”
United States President Barack Obama also shed light on these moving acts of heroism in his address to the country on April 16.
“Because what the world saw yesterday in the aftermath of the explosions were stories of heroism and kindness, and generosity and love: Exhausted runners who kept running to the nearest hospital to give blood, and those who stayed to tend to the wounded, some tearing off their own clothes to make tourniquets,” he said.
Knight said seeing what surrounded him in those mere hours took him from happiness to horror and, finally pride.
“I went from an emotional high, full of pride and awe watching these runners, to seeing the lowest of humanity and then seeing the aftermath of people coming together to help strangers without even asking – just acting,” Knight said.
“I think evil has to be planned but acts of kindness are automatic,” he said.
Investigators are still piecing together what happened on Monday. So far, three people, including an 8-year-old boy, are dead and more than 170 people are injured.
Still, marathon organizers have vowed to continue the world’s oldest and most prestigious annual race next year.
Knight said he’s promised to be there next year to support the runners again.
And from that tragic Monday, Knight says he takes away memories of goodwill.
“I will remember the big hearts before the explosion and how happy I felt for those people. I refuse to be terrorized by this,” he told Global News.
carmen.chai@globalnews.ca
Follow @Carmen_Chai
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