They’ve done a lot of traveling over the years, but home has never felt so good to Gene and Linda Wray.
Residents of Oceanside since 1987, Gene and Linda have been married for 33 years and used to own Coombs General Store before selling it in 1999.
Now 60 and a produce manager for Buy Low Foods in Port Alberni, Gene was born in Manitoba and moved to Vancouver with his family when he was 14.
He played hockey and other sports growing up and says he started running around 1974 and hasn’t looked back since.
“I originally ran to lose weight, and once I started seeing the weight come off I started enjoying it.”
In the fall of 2006 he decided it was time to try doing a marathon — up until then he had always run by himself. And at the age of 54 he ran the Vancouver International Marathon.
The Boston Marathon was his ninth marathon.
Wray said he trained hard to qualify for Boston and did so at the 2011 Victoria Marathon which he completed in a personal best time of 3:48.03.
“I needed 3:55 to qualify so I was extremely pleased to come in under.”
He missed the cutoff date for the 2012 Boston Marathon and had to wait a year.
For the Wray’s, the trip to Boston was a family outing as his two sisters and his niece also made the trip to watch him. They were on the other side of the street when the bombs went off.
“For marathoners it’s like our Stanley Cup, our Super Bowl — there are many marathons in the world, there are hundreds of them, but there’s only one Boston,” he said.
Race day he said “was absolutely perfect day, it was sunny, about 15, just a perfect day to run, and of course we had no idea when we headed out what was going to happen.”
Wray was part of the third and final ‘wave’ — there were 9,000 runners in each of the three waves.
Wave one left at 10 a.m. wave two at 10:20 and wave three at 10:40.
The first 10 km he said are a bit quieter, but from 10km on “it’s nothing but people (on the side of the road) high five-ing, cheering, it’s so steeped in tradition, they absolutely embrace the marathon in Massachusetts.”
The famous course he went on to explain only has about three turns, and when you make your last turn on Boylston Street it’s about 800 meters to the finish line, “and I remember mouthing to myself ‘oh my God, I was not prepared for how many people were there in that last 800 meters. Everybody told me I wasn’t going to believe it at the end, and they were right. I didn’t want it to end,” he said. “I wanted to walk the last part, it was just unbelievable.”
As per tradition, Wray was checked over by the medical staff then had his photo taken at the finish line. He was then handed a thermal blanket and presented his keepsake Boston Marathon medal.
At that point he walked up the street a ways then ducked behind a bus to change into some dry clothes, “and that’s when the explosions went off.
“I was putting my dry shirt on when the first bomb went off and it just seemed right behind it the second one went off.”
“You have to remember it was Patriot’s Day,” he said, “so I originally thought it was a cannon or something.”
And it was then he said that police on the sidelines looked at them “and they just immediately took off and started running back towards the explosions so I knew something bad was happening.”
He said at that point he started heading back towards the family meeting area which was one block over from the finish line, where his wife was supposed to be waiting, “and as I started to walk back I could see the wave of panic… the first thing I heard was someone yelling ‘car bombs, run’; so I just started running and then the panic started setting in.
“I’ll never forget that.”
Linda had been standing near the finish line and right where the second explosion went off, but she had left about two minutes before and was heading to the family meeting area after learning Gene had already finished.
“I zigzagged to get back to the family meeting area, everything now is being cordoned off, there’s black SUVs going every direction, I’ve never seen so many black suburbans in my life. And we’re not talking half an hour, I mean they were on the scene within minutes. People say they weren’t prepared, but they were very prepared in my opinion.”
BOSTON’S BOYLSTON STREET, site of the Boston Marathon bombings, the day after. Gene Wray photoWray had no cell phone at that time so he stopped and borrowed a phone from a volunteer.
“I told him I don’t live here he said ‘I don’t care where you live,’ and handed me his phone. I dialed (Linda’s number) and no answer. I dialed again and it went straight to voice mail, and that’s when the panic really started to set in.”
Wray said he managed to get back to the family meeting area using alley’s and side-streets “and waited for at least an hour, but she never came, so I started heading back to the Sheraton (where they were staying), again taking back streets the whole way.
“At that point it was absolute chaos,” said Wray.
It took him about 45 minutes to get back to the hotel “and it’s not really that far I mean maybe five blocks in a straight line but…”
A fellow runner who he offered to help get back to the Sheraton was in shock.
“There was no conversation. I just wanted to get back to the hotel and made sure she was with me the whole time,” he said, adding “there were people running everywhere, crying, I guess we were all bewildered.”
When Wray and the lady he was helping got back to the hotel (he never saw her again) the first thing he did was go straight to the lobby phone and call their room.
“There was no answer, so I decided I was going to go up, shower, change and go back out and look for Linda.”
At this point the lobby of the Sheraton Hotel is in chaos and absolutely packed with people.
Wray started heading towards the elevators and spotted his wife Linda who was standing with a group of people.
“She was sobbing and I guess I yelled to her, and she came running to me.”
That reunion, he said, “was just a massive relief. All these thoughts going through my head for two hours, it was pretty emotional.” Shortly after that he heard from his sisters that they were all fine.
“I don’t think scared is even the right word it was more of a numbness. We weren’t near the explosions but we were right in the chaos. What could have happened keeps going through your head, and again, nothing happened to us. My goodness.”
The Wray’s spent the next few hours in the lobby to be with the others then eventually made their way back up to their room where they were glued to the television for any information.
“Not very good,” Wray said when asked how he slept that night. “You have one ear up listing for any noises, for more explosions. It was an uneasy feeling, I mean at one point we’re watching CNN and they’re outside our door, outside our hotel.”
The bombing happened on April 15 and they returned home on the 17th.
“We went out for dinner Tuesday evening and tried to talk about normal things like how we were feeling, but everything went back to the finish line,” he said. “You didn’t want to celebrate.”
Gene by the way finished the 26.2 mile run with a new PBT of 3:45.35.
On the 16th he said they went out for a walk and were met by what looked like a ghost town. The entire street empty, not a soul to be seen. It was eery, just papers and those thermal blankets they hand out blowing around.”
In a scene with shades of the Mary Celeste, the couple found a restaurant that had been evacuated quickly.
Plates of partially eaten food sat on the table, the napkins and cutlery and glasses all positioned as if someone would be returning shortly.
Along the way, he says the citizens of Boston “were tremendous. We thanked them and one policeman said with conviction ‘make sure you come back to Boston.’
“I was so happy to be home. Seriously. My mind was still with the people back in Boston, but I was so grateful to be back.”
Even now he said there are things that he’d seen but forgotten about that are coming back to him.
“We’re having a family day tomorrow,” he said last Saturday over the phone. “We’re going to watch our grandson play baseball and I can hardly wait.”
“It’s great to be home,” Linda confirmed with a smile and a knowing nod of her head the next day when The NEWS caught up with the couple up at Springwood Old as they watched on from the left field fence. “We feel really fortunate.”
BC RUNNERS: There were 230 runners from B.C. in this year’s Boston Marathon and at least 30 from Vancouver Island, including Nanoose Bay’s Terry Riggins, who is also home safe as reported in Tuesday’s PQB NEWS.
