Tragedy and Triumph in Boston
Gillian Reny
The weather on April 13, 2013, was typical of Boston. It was mostly cloudy with scattered showers, and the temperature was in the 50s. A 5-10 mile per hour wind would hamper the runners in the Boston Marathon.
At the finish line stood Gillian Reny, a Browne and Nicholas-Buckingham school student in Cambridge, just across the Charles River. With her were her parents, Stephen, and Audrey, who were waiting for their daughter Danielle to finish.
Without warning, a pressure cooker bomb containing nails, ball bearings, and metal fragments exploded, wounding 260 people and killing three. Among the injured were the Renys, who were all taken to Brigham and Woman’s Hospital. Gillian’s injuries were the most severe, and her surgeons weren’t sure they could save her life, let alone her damaged legs.
After multiple surgeries and countless hours of physical therapy, Gillian began college the next Fall at the University of Pennsylvania. She can now run and ski once again. Her family felt so grateful for the care received at The Brigham and Women’s Hospital that they began The Stepping Strong Foundation, which has raised Thirty Million Dollars to support research and innovation in trauma treatment.
Gillian is engaged to one of Vicki’s second cousins, Matt Nardella, and I recently met her in Manlius, New York, at the funeral of Vicki’s uncle, Anthony Nardella. Gillian, working toward a master’s degree in organizational psychology at Columbia, was poised, articulate, humble, and engaging. I could not help but like and admire this courageous woman who turned tragedy into service and outran defeat to a stunning finish.