Community Corner

'What If I Had Slowed Down?' Local Boston Marathon Runner Asks

Boston Marathon runner Seth Phillips, of South Whitehall, ponders his fate had he not been inspired by a man running on a prosthetic blade. It may have saved his life.

Bone-weary and dehydrated, Boston Marathon runner of South Whitehall, had just passed Heartbreak Hill when he considered slowing down, even walking.

At that moment, the 60-year-old saw a man running ahead of him on a prosthetic blade. Phillips vowed not to slow down.

It may have saved his life.

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Phillips crossed the finish line in 4:08:39, about two minutes before the first explosion rocked Copley Square, maiming dozens of spectators and killing three.

"I thought, if that person can show up and be ahead of me and I'm on two legs, as it were, there's no reason I can't keep going," Phillips recounted Tuesday from his office at Congregation Keneseth Israel in Allentown where he has served as rabbi for the last eight months.

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Since Monday's tragic bombing, Phillips has replayed that moment in his mind and wonders how close to death he may have come.

"What if I had slowed down? What if I had walked or hadn't seen that person?," Phillips said.

"I feel extraordinarily fortunate and yet a deep kinship with the spectators, with the runners, the dead, the injured, the city of Boston."

Phillips is a veteran of marathons (53 of them) and the military— he served in the U.S. Navy for 20 years and was a chaplain for three years at the U.S. Naval Academy prior to moving to the Lehigh Valley.

Yet even during his three brief missions to Iraq in 2005 and 2006, Phillips said he never felt he came close to the same terror he experienced at the marathon.

In the military, there's an expectation of danger for which soldiers train and prepare, he said.

But not in civilian life, not during a festive event in an American city on a crisp April day when Phillips, dressed as a bumblebee, along with dozens of other free spirits are wearing whimsical costumes during one of the world's premier running races.

Phillips, who was funneled out of the race, immediately caught a cab and went straight to Logan Airport, wrapping his Boston Marathon mylar blanket around his yellow-and-black running attire, his sparkly bee antennae still bobbing on top of his head.

Clearly a runner, Phillip's attire caught the attention of an FBI agent at the airport.

"Hey, want to talk about it?," the agent asked.

Assuming the man was either a chatty bystander or a journalist, Phillips did not want to, until he learned his identity.

A day later, Phillips is still processing the experience, the "what ifs." Being with concerned people has been helpful, he said.

His trainer at the Jewish Community Center called him today and the woman who works at the front desk told him, "Even though you're a rabbi, you can still talk to someone."

"It's been really helpful for me to know, as with the people in Boston, no one has to go through a tragedy alone. There really are caring people, despite this spectacular instance to the opposite."


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