Roseann Sdoia used to love Patriots’ Day.
Enjoying the day’s events was a tradition in the Sdoia family. Gene Sdoia would drive his two daughters the 45 minutes from their home in Dracut, Mass., to Boston for the Red Sox game. They would eat hot dogs and popcorn then leave Fenway Park early to watch the Boston Marathon runners race through Kenmore Square.
Sdoia continued the tradition as she got older. April 15, 2013 started off like any other Patriots’ Day for her at Fenway Park. Sdoia and her friend Sabrina ate hot dogs on gluten-free buns and drank gluten-free beer (Sdoia has celiac disease). They left the game early and posted up in front of the Forum restaurant—a favorite marathon-viewing spot—in order to cheer on their friend Jen as she ran by.
“I’m not sure Marathon Monday will ever be a favorite day again,” Sdoia said. “I can try to enjoy it somewhat, but it will always be scarred by that particular day.”
Observed on the third Monday each April, Patriots’ Day is an official Massachusetts state holiday commemorating the anniversary of the 1775 Battles of Lexington and Concord, the first bloodshed of the American Revolutionary War. The day is filled with reenactments, ceremonies and sporting events. The Red Sox have played at Fenway Park on Patriots’ Day since 1959, typically in the morning. The biggest celebration, though, is the Boston Marathon, which has been run every Patriots’ Day since 1897. It’s also why the day is referred to as Marathon Monday.
Marathon Monday 2013 will forever be remembered.
At approximately 2:49 p.m., two homemade pressure-cooker bombs filled with shrapnel, nails and ball bearings exploded within 12 seconds of each other near the marathon’s finish line on Boylston Street. After loud popping sounds and flashes of white light, Sdoia lay on the ground in a pool of her own blood not knowing what had happened or, more importantly, if she’d survive.
Sdoia, who lost her right leg that day, spares no detail chronicling her personal experience of the Boston Marathon bombing and its aftermath in Perfect Strangers: Friendship, Strength, and Recovery After Boston’s Worst Day. The book, published by Public Affairs, recounts the terrorist attacks by brothers Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, whose bombs killed three and injured more than 264 people, including Sdoia.

Roseann Sdoia Tells Personal Tale of Boston Marathon Bombing in New Book

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