Year after tragedy, dozens of Delawareans returning to Boston Marathon

• Bob Hempton%3A %27I knew I had to go back%27
• 36th annual Delaware Sports Club bus trip departed for the Boston Marathon on Saturday morning

Bob Hempton couldn't leave the Boston Marathon at a time like this, and many Delaware runners share his sentiments.

Through 18 excursions across Boston's 26 miles and 385 yards of glorious torture, Hempton had grown to adore the challenge provided by the world's oldest annual footrace.

When his legs didn't move him as fast as he preferred, the encouragement exuding from the thick crowds lining the route from Hopkinton to Boston's Back Bay nudged him along.

But when Hempton passed the finish line last April 15 on Boylston Street and took a few more steps and crossed Dartmouth, he was done. He had decided, at age 66, it would likely be his last Boston Marathon.

Then Hempton heard and felt the explosion.

"It rocked us," said Hempton, who was about 150 yards away from the first bomb blast near the finish line and had finished, he later calculated, one minute and 39 seconds before it occurred.

"It was so loud. The reaction was to flinch. It was a destructive sound. I knew right away it was a bomb," added Hempton, who was familiar with that boom from having been a U.S. Army Reservist in the 1960s.

The detonation, and a second farther up Boylston, killed three and injured more than 250, including many who lost limbs.

Later that week, brothers Dzhokhar and Tamerlan Tsarnaev were identified as having planted the bombs, with Tamerlan killed in a shootout with police and Dzhokhar later captured.

More than 36,000 people have entered Monday's 118th annual Boston Marathon. It's the second-largest field in race history, topped only by the 38,000 who packed the 100th annual in 1996.

Some are going back to finish what they couldn't last year, when the race was suddenly halted after the explosions.

Others will return because they always do, but with an ever greater appreciation for an experience they already treasured.

Many will run Boston simply because of what happened last year, to help heal the wound. As somewhat of a Boston Marathon lifer, Hempton will be one of them.

"I knew I had to go back," he said.

It didn't take him long to decide. The news trickled in that afternoon last year. The mayhem had led to death and maiming.

Before the sun set, Hempton knew he'd run the Boston Marathon for a 19th time in 2014.

"One of the things that makes Boston so great is the people who cheer for you," the Wilmington resident said. "Those were the people, who came out to support the runners, who bore the brunt of the terrorist attack.

"You have to go back to honor the people who were killed and injured, and because you appreciate what a great event Boston is. It was a duty. I had to do it."

'Statement year'

There are 73 Delawareans entered in Monday's race, perhaps the largest First State field ever. Runners must qualify for Boston, though several thousand spots are reserved each year for those raising money for charities.

Most are returnees who were more determined than ever to go back, despite a brutal winter that severely undermined training. The persistent ice and snow made finding clear outdoor footpaths difficult.

"It was the hardest I've ever experienced, by far," said Lee Kauffman, 56, of Wilmington, who'll run his 28th straight Boston Marathon. "There was no place to run."

Nobody in Delaware knows the race better than Doug White. His annual streak, which included a Top 10 masters finish in 1985, helped land him in the Delaware Sports Hall of Fame.

But White had decided last year that, at age 70, running the Boston Marathon for the 40th straight year was a perfectly round number on which to end.

With a mile to go near Fenway Park at Kenmore Square, White stopped for a couple minutes to toast his streak by having a beer with his friend Ed Hartwell.

"I was in no rush," he said. "I was just enjoying the experience."

Soon after he started running again, before he turned onto Boylston and could eye the straight-away to the finish, everyone in front of him stopped.

"I looked up ahead, and nobody was moving," said White, who does not think he would have been in harm's way if he hadn't taken the break near Fenway. "It looked like when you're driving on I-95 and there's an accident way ahead and everybody's stopped. I was about a half-mile from the finish.

"Nobody knew anything. You heard sirens and you could see fire engines and police cars flying around. I thought there might be a fire on the course. It was a half-hour before anybody knew what happened."

That's when worry set in. Wife Susan, his three children and other family members had planned to cheer for White near the finish line. He was finally able to borrow someone's phone and make contact, which was difficult in the aftermath.

White, who had annually organized and led a Delaware Sports Club trip to the marathon, hiked back to the bus located several blocks from the finish area, where reunions were particularly heartfelt this day.

At the time, he'd suggested that still would be his last Boston. But White, like Hempton, was left with a sinking feeling that could only be lifted by a return to his beloved Boston.

"Last year was just not the time to end my streak," he said. "It just wasn't right.

"Plus, Dr. Funk didn't get to finish last year, and I'm going to run it with him," White added of Newark area family physician William Funk, also among the 5,600-plus, from more than 23,000 starters, not able to finish.

All were permitted to return this year for a second chance. White does, like other runners, admit he goes to Boston knowing a copy-cat attack could be difficult to prevent. But none suggested such trepidation ever made them consider not going.

"I haven't really trained. I'm just going to run and hope to get through it," said White. "If I get through this year, maybe I'll go back every year until I can't do it anymore."

Funk had just crested Heartbreak Hill with about five miles left when police came out and closed the course in front of him.

"I was in the back of the pack with all the other fundraisers, and we couldn't believe they would actually close the course, because nothing seemed different to us, and initially the people on the course did not know," he said. "The only thing the police would share was that there's a problem ahead and they were closing the course.

"Being marathoners, we don't much care what problems are ahead. We usually run around or through it or over it or crawl under it or something like that. We find a way."

Those runners were eventually herded to a nearby tent, where they quickly began to learn what was happening. They were transported to a nearby town hall and Funk was able to make contact with the Delaware Sports Club group. The bus picked him up on the way back to the hotel in Natick.

Saturday morning at ATI Physical Therapy in Pike Creek, the 36th annual Delaware Sports Club bus trip departed for the Boston Marathon. Funk was aboard.

"This year was a true statement year," Funk said. "The most important emotion is to never let any terrorist event or any threat like that persuade you to do something different than you would ordinarily do. As Americans, we have to step up, not step back."

Pressing on

That same patriotic fervor inspired Wilmington resident Sheri Herrmann. After enjoying the exhilaration of completing her third Boston Marathon, Herrmann had been reduced to tears as she learned of the bloodshed and saw the TV footage in the area where she'd just run.

"The Boston Marathon is wonderful," she said. "The entire course, I've never run a race that has more support. People are just phenomenal, and to think that somebody did that ... where I had just run."

She had planned for last year's Boston to be her last "for a while." That changed the instant she understood the magnitude of the tragedy. She and husband Dirk Sweigart ran last year and will be back on the starting line Monday.

"You can't let them win. Oh, no. Oh, no," said Herrmann.

Steve Sinko has been one of Delaware's most successful runners at the event, despite the course's devilish way of making even a rewarding endeavor a harrowing experience.

He has been a top-80 overall finisher all three times he's run there, but Sinko thought his best Boston performance – a 2:28.25 in 2010 for 56th place – would be his last.

"After I ran it the last time, I was satisfied," he said. "I was pretty content with the distance."

But Sinko, 37, who operates the Delaware Running Company store on Main Street in Newark and coaches the cross country and track teams at Newark Charter, felt compelled to go back.

"Honestly, because of what happened last year," he said of his motivation. "I already had a standing qualifying time from Philadelphia in 2012 and I thought, it's going to be pretty significant.

"For something like that to happen, and so many people jumping in to help, it showed the way the running community is: A tight-knit group that you can always count on for support."

Sinko mentioned the numerous national and local events that took place to raise money for the victims, such as Wilmington's One Fund Boston 5K last May that drew more than 600 runners.

"I don't know what'll happen until I get out there," said Sinko, who has battled some injuries. "But if I go up there and it doesn't go well, I'll be a little disappointed. But the main thing is just being there."

Even for those who were going back anyway this year after running in 2013, it's different.

Andrew Jakubowitch, 35, of Wilmington goes to his seventh Boston Marathon with the typical determination to make his training pay off and run his best race. His perspective will be enhanced, he said, because now more are aware of Boston and its unique grip on the participants, the city of Boston and its environs.

As a runner, he said, "You have to use whatever you can to inspire you." But he also had to be careful.

Distance running is painful enough, and if he focused too much on the hurt unleashed by last year's bombings, it only made him suffer more.

"Every time I think about it, I get real emotional," he said. "So I try to just think about what my very small impact would be on the race."

For Jakubowitch and others like him, that was a simple charge.

You return to Boston. And you run. By doing that, Boston is restored to what it always has been.

To Kauffmann, it's about "resolve." As individuals, the runners are "insignificant," he suggested, in comparison to the overall event.

But like the event itself, which has carried on across parts of three centuries and through generations of runners, they, too, must press on.

"We have to persevere," he said, "and just put one foot in front of the other. That's what the Boston Marathon has always been about.

"Nothing slows us down. Nothing gets in our way."

The finish line

The trek down Boylston to the Boston Marathon finish line is a gauntlet of sound and celebration that, for the runners, is underscored by a sense of tremendous relief.

The end is in sight, and the approach is heralded with the deafening cheers of spectators echoing off the buildings surrounding that final path.

"You're just exhausted after the run, elated at the same time, and so honored to have run the Boston Marathon and to cross the finish line," Hempton said.

"For most distance runners, crossing the Boston Marathon finish line is everything. ... That famous finish line."

Painted in blue and gold across Boylston, that wide stripe is, practically, sacred.

And it had been defiled.

For many, the chance to gallop back across that revered stretch of asphalt, stained nearby by blood and littered with shrapnel last year, is a means of purifying it.

An odd thing happened to Hempton en route to that hallowed ground in 2013. Despite his familiarity with the course, with its tantalizing downhill slopes and arduous climbs, he had difficulty. Such is the unpredictability of the marathon. It is the boss, no matter how much one trains, prepares and strategizes.

But after Hempton crested the series of ruthless hills from miles 17 through 21, culminating with notorious Heartbreak Hill, he found a new energy.

The words of Newark resident Frank Barbera, who has run Boston and now coaches Hempton, echoed in his head: No matter how you feel, when the final stretch arrives, you must try to push the pace, just to see what happens.

"I had a terrible race," said Hempton, whose 4:07:45 was his worst Boston time. "But, at about mile 21, I picked it up and ran as hard as I could and probably picked up about 10 or 15 seconds per mile."

In addition to carving down his time, it may have had another benefit, though he'll never know.

"That actually may have saved me from the blast," Hempton said.

That's the final irony of an experience Hempton termed "so sad and unbelievable."

"I had said to myself as I was running, 'Start taking it in,' " Hempton said. "That was going to be my last Boston. I'd had a great career but it was time to retire."

Instead, for Hempton and many others who have benefited from the Boston Marathon's surplus of spirit and camaraderie, it is time to go back and return the favor.

Contact Kevin Tresolini at ktresolini@delawareonline.com.