Boston bombing felt in Aroostook
Contributed photo
FENWAY FUN — Great times at a Boston Red Sox game were overshadowed Monday for the Lothrop family of Ashland — from left, Ben, Emilee and Tammy — when two bombs exploded near the finish line of the Boston Marathon, just two miles from a hotel where other family members were staying. The Patriot’s Day terrorist attack killed three people and injured over 100 more.
By Kevin Sjoberg
Staff Writer
Monday’s bomb explosion at the Boston Marathon, which killed three people and injured more than 100 others, hit too close for some Aroostook County residents, who were in the city taking in a Red Sox baseball game which wrapped up approximately an hour before the incident occurred.
Ben Lothrop of Ashland, his wife Tammy and 12-year-old daughter Emilee had left Fenway Park after the game and had gone into a Howard Johnson’s hotel on Boylston Street, approximately two miles from the bombing site, where another daughter, Ashlee Peters, also of Ashland, was staying along with Craig MacFarline and their son, Aiden.
“We were thinking about heading toward the end of the marathon, but were watching television and saw the account of the bombing on one of the stations,” Ben Lothrop said. “Then we started hearing a ton of ambulance and police sirens zoom past the hotel.”
Subway service had been shut down in the city and the Lothrops were staying in Revere, so all six piled into MacFarline’s car and ended up spending the night in Revere before venturing back to Maine Tuesday morning.
“Everything was happening right around us and when you hear all the sirens, it made it very surreal,” said Tammy Lothrop. “It was very tough on Emilee. It was hard for her to process everything and she was scared. I don’t know if she’s ever going to want to go back to Boston again,” she added.
“To know we were just a mile or two from a terrible tragedy, it was strange.”
Rene Cloukey of Presque Isle and Joe Fitzpatrick of Houlton also made the trip to Fenway to take in the baseball game. They were at Kenmore Square after the game ended, watching marathon runners go past about a mile from the finish line. As they tried to get on the subway, the train had been evacuated and a Boston police officer informed the two that subway service was closed throughout the city and that Boston was in a state of emergency.
Cloukey, the sports director for WAGM-TV, said that he was immediately struck by what was taking place when he saw National Guard troops in full gear in the back of pick-up trucks, helicopters hovering above and emergency vehicles all around.
“We had initially heard that there were 10 people injured, but then we saw ambulances — two across — all the way down the street and knew it was much more serious than we were first led to believe,” he said.
“It’s the most surreal thing I had ever witnessed,” said Cloukey, who had never been in Boston on Patriot’s Day in the past.
“We were just watching the runners and taking in the atmosphere at the 25-mile mark,” he said. “There were hundreds of runners going by and the sidewalks were lined up eight or nine rows deep. I was thinking after about the devastation that would have been caused if a bomb had gone off where we were.”
Cloukey and Fitzpatrick hailed a taxi cab and it took nearly 80 minutes to get from Kenmore Square to Revere, where they then took their vehicle to a hotel in neighboring Peabody. Like the Lothrops, they traveled back to northern Maine Tuesday.
“It sure makes you appreciate Aroostook County even more,” said Ben Lothrop.
