CONSOLER IN CHIEF: President Obama meets with Boston Athletic Association volunteers, who help organize the annual marathon, after yesterday’s service. (AP)
President Obama consoled a shellshocked nation yesterday at a memorial service in Boston for those lost in the marathon terror attack, pledging to the wounded and the country, “You will run again.”
Again delivering a eulogy for those lost in a senseless attack, as he did after Newtown, Obama offered one of the most powerful orations of his presidency.
“We may be momentarily knocked off our feet, but we’ll pick ourselves up. We’ll keep going. We will finish the race,” he said at the interfaith service at the Cathedral of the Holy Cross.
Taking to the pulpit of the enormous cathedral, Obama spoke of Boston in personal terms. The church is across the river from where he attended Harvard Law School, and it was in Boston where Obama delivered the keynote address at the 2004 Democratic National Convention.
“As you begin this long journey of recovery, your city is with you. Your commonwealth is with you. Your country is with you,” he said in strong, strident tones.
“We will all be with you as you learn to stand and walk and, yes, run again. Of that I have no doubt, you will run again,” he said to rousing applause from the 2,000 crowded into the cathedral.
“You will run again, because that’s what the people of Boston are made of. Your resolve is the greatest rebuke to whoever committed this heinous act . . . It should be pretty clear by now that they picked the wrong city.”
He made numerous appeals to the city’s pride, pointing, as he did earlier this week, to acts of heroism and resolve that stood out amid the devastation of the twin bomb blasts that erupted at the Boston Marathon finish line.
Obama, who was accompanied by First Lady Michelle Obama, called Boston “one of the world’s great cities” before turning to the horrible events that shattered the city — and the nation’s — peace.
“It was a beautiful day to be in Boston — a day that explains why a poet once wrote that this town is not just a capital, not just a place. Boston, he said, ‘is the perfect state of grace,’ ” he said.
“And then, in an instant, the day’s beauty was shattered. A celebration became a tragedy. And so we come together to pray, and mourn, and measure our loss. But we also come together today to reclaim that state of grace — to reaffirm that the spirit of this city is undaunted, and the spirit of this country shall remain undimmed.”
“You’ve shown us, Boston, that in the face of evil, Americans will lift up what’s good. In the face of cruelty, we will choose compassion. In the face of those who would visit death upon innocents, we will choose to save and to comfort and to heal. We’ll choose friendship. We’ll choose love,” Obama said.
Obama spoke directly to those still recuperating in hospitals from the leg and other wounds wrought by the nails and ball bearings that blasted out of the two bombs on Boylston Street.
Before a church filled with Bostonians — most of whom had lined up in the early-morning hours to get inside — and state leaders, including Gov. Deval Patrick, Boston Mayor Thomas Menino and former rival Mitt Romney, Obama provided reassurance that the attackers would be caught and optimism that the city would recover.
“Every one of us has been touched by this attack on your beloved city. Every one of us stands with you,” he said.
While his first remarks on the attack, delivered in the cramped White House briefing room, were flat, the president didn’t hold back yesterday in the cathedral from turning on his famed oratory. He joked later at a meeting with first responders that he had been called “Reverend Obama.”
The crowd burst into applause when Obama gushed about a town he grew to know and love while a law student at Harvard.
“Your resolve is the greatest rebuke to whoever committed this heinous act,” Obama said. “If they sought to intimidate us, to terrorize us, to shake us from . . . the values that make us who we are, as Americans — well, it should be pretty clear by now that they picked the wrong city to do it. Not here in Boston.”
Like President Bush at Ground Zero after the 9/11 attacks, Obama also had a message for those who committed the act — whom he ripped as “these small, stunted individuals who would destroy instead of build.”
“We will find you. We will hold you accountable. But more than that, our fidelity to our way of life — to our free and open society — will only grow stronger,” he said.
Obama and his speechwriters made ample use of the marathon itself for inspiration.
“Every third Monday in April, you welcome people from all around the world to the Hub for friendship and fellowship and healthy competition — a gathering of men and women of every race and every religion, every shape and every size; a multitude represented by all those flags that flew over the finish line,” he said.
He had a promise for Boston.
“And this time next year, on the third Monday in April, the world will return to this great American city to run harder than ever, and to cheer even louder, for the 118th Boston Marathon,” the president said. “Bet on it.”
Obama spoke just hours before the FBI released photos and video of two suspects. It was the first time he had to console a community after a massacre when the killers were still on the run.
The president met with the family of Krystle Campbell, the 29-year-old killed in the explosions before he left the cathedral. He met then met marathon volunteers and race organizers at a gym across the street.
Before leaving Boston, the Obamas went to Massachusetts General Hospital, where they met privately with many of the injured. Separately, the first lady met with patients, their families and hospital staff at Boston Children’s Hospital and Brigham and Women’s Hospital