Tenorio: Marathon terror attacks left community grieving one year ago today

Today marks one year since the Boston Marathon bombings. One year since two bombs exploded near the finish line, killing three people and wounding over 260.I heard those bombs from outside the Copley Plaza Hotel, where I was covering the Marathon for the Item. I was standing with hotel employees, spectators and marathoners, trying to find out what had just happened.I remember the stream of police cars speeding toward the direction where the explosions occurred, and the stream of people moving the other way, with someone saying how shaken they all looked. I thought about going toward the direction of the bombings, but decided against it.People told us that bombs had exploded at the finish line. I remember one woman saying she had to evacuate a building near the Prudential Center, and a photo assistant showing an image of the smoke.I remember the people who rushed by, urging us to donate blood … and the team of Marathon volunteers who evacuated us.A few hours later, I was going back to Copley Square, this time to the Westin, for a press conference with then-Mayor Tom Menino, Gov. Deval Patrick and then-Boston Police Commissioner Ed Davis. I passed a soldier – not a policeman, a soldier – and, improbably, a man walking his dog near the hotel, complaining about how certain streets were closed down.I remember the kind phone calls I got that day to see if I was OK – including my mother, my girlfriend Laura, my sister, my aunt in Baltimore, Laura?s mother and Laura?s cousin in New Jersey. And I kept in contact with my sports editor, Steve Krause; my fellow reporter Thor Jourgensen; and our managing editor, Victor DeRubeis.It was a tragic, terrifying day, as we learned the identities of the dead: Martin Richard, an eight-year-old boy from Dorchester. Lu Lingzi, a graduate student from China at BU. Krystle Campbell, who was a manager at the Summer Shack. All had come to Boston for the same reason many of us had: to watch the Marathon.I will watch the Marathon this year, but with a sense of sadness and loss. The Marathon has lost the sense of innocence it held before last year. Where once we stood by the sidelines, or even headed towards the finish line, this year we might feel unsure of doing so.Last Monday, I went back to Copley Square for the first time in a while … I think it was the first time since the Marathon. I had seen the moving Boston Public Library exhibit on the Marathon memorials. As I walked down the steps of the BPL, I saw the Copley Plaza across the street on the right. The same hotel I had stepped out of on April 15, 2013.I felt shock and sorrow at first … but then a sense of resolve. A resolve that we would not let terror defeat us, that the Marathon would continue and that we would move forward as a community.