Boston Author Dennis Lehane Praises Response to Marathon Bombings
Published at
ABC(NEW YORK) — Speaking Sunday morning on This Week, author and Boston native Dennis Lehane praised the response to the Boston Marathon bombings, calling it as one of the greatest “acts of heroism” he has ever seen.
“I’ve been proud to be from Boston my whole life – I don’t think I’ve ever been as proud as I have been this week. The thing that will stick with me the rest of my life is, the plot of these brothers failed within two seconds of the first explosion. Because the objective of terror is to rattle a populous. It’s to make them paralyzed with fear,” he said. “And to see all of these civilians run toward the blast to help their fellow civilians, to help their fellow Bostonians, their fellow members of the human race was one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever seen. It was one of the great acts of heroism I’ve ever witnessed.”
The iconic author of such books as Mystic River, and Gone, Baby, Gone, praised the people of Boston as “tough and hearty” with a “pugnacious pride.”
“We’re a city that values civil discourse, civil liberties. And then at the same time, we have this kind of pugnacious pride – this romantic, underdog – ‘if you’re gonna hit me, you better hit me very, very hard, or I won’t go down’ kind of vibe. I mean, we were Red Sox fans for a century, so that in and of itself is – is a tough and hearty people,” he said. “I got a couple of different texts from friends that were the same text, essentially, that was ‘they messed with the wrong city.’”
Lehane described the capture Friday night of the second suspect in the Boston Marathon bombings, 19-year-old Dzhokhar Tsarnaev as euphoric.
“When it came back ‘we got him,’ I think you could see the euphoria, you could see the relief. You could see a sense of vindication, of justice prevailing, of our values trumping very corrupt values. I think you could — you could feel that. It felt – it felt wonderful.”
Lehane said the attacks at this year’s marathon would not derail future races, predicting twice the turnout next April.
“I think the citizens of this city were saying ‘we’re not going to change. This is going to change nothing. Whatever you thought, whatever your objective was, whatever you thought you were going to do to our spirit — it’s not going to change.’ You go to the marathon next year, I bet there’ll be twice as many people there.”
Copyright 2013 ABC News Radio