The day after the surviving Boston Marathon bomber was sentenced to death last Friday, May 15 2015, Boston Globe writer Kevin Cullen reminds us to let the evildoers fade into the obscurity of history, while we focus on the heroes. Kevin asks, “How do we forget the Tsarnaev brothers? How do we write them out of the narrative, so that the legacy of the attack on the Boston Marathon focuses on those worth remembering?”
…the Tsarnaev brothers made choices, too, and they actually had much, much more time to make them. They spent months listening to the jihadi propaganda that promised them paradise if they murdered innocents. They spent more months preparing their bombs, preparing their minds, dehumanizing the strangers they would kill and maim.
Dzhokhar Tsarnaev lingered for four minutes behind a row of children that included Martin and Jane Richard. He chose to leave his bomb there, in back of those kids, and that is why, I have no doubt, 12 people chose to sentence him to death.
…The selflessness that played out on Boylston Street on April 15, 2013, the triumph of decency over a cult of death, the courage of those who lost loved ones and limbs to move forward, the foundations and memorials in the names of those who died — they ensure we will carry and remember what’s really important.
Cullen has a friend who missed the bomb by about 10 seconds:
Fred Hussey went to Mass every day for a month after the bombings. He prayed for the victims, the survivors. He still does. He wonders why them and not him. But he didn’t follow the trial and says he will ignore anything in the future about Dzhokhar Tsarnaev. He won’t read a word. He will turn off the TV and the radio.
“I don’t think about him,” Fred Hussey said. “It’s a choice.”
This is the same reason I don’t like to mention the name of Trayvon Martin‘s killer. Let destroyers be forgotten while we focus on our heroes and celebrate the precious memories of innocent victims, gone too soon.
HuffPost shares more on Boston Marathon heroes.