Jetlagged and sleep-deprived, Norwood native and Army Spc. Lucas Carr pushed through the 26.2-mile Boston Marathon yesterday in honor of a fellow soldier who was killed in a Black Hawk helicopter crash in northern Iraq last summer.
"I still think about it every day. It's like sometimes the most gifted people on the planet are needed elsewhere," said Carr, referring to his fellow 25th Infantry Division soldier, Jessy Pollard, 22. Pollard, a Missouri native, was one of 14 people who died on the helicopter after it crashed due to mechanical problems on Aug. 22.
But even though he arrived in Boston at 6 a.m. Saturday morning and spent the rest of the weekend visiting and prepping for the race, Carr appeared calm and ready at the starting line in Hopkinton yesterday morning. He finished the race in 4:03.
"I got stronger toward the end. The second I stepped back into Boston, it felt like home," he said. He pulled a hamstring around mile 20 on Heartbreak Hill in Newton, but he continued on to the finish line in Boston after making a brief stop at the medical tent.
"I had to massage it and work it out," he said.
Carr, 28, grew up in Norwood at the Cypress Street home where his parents still live. When he met Pollard, he told him all about the Boston Red Sox and the DJs on WAAF, a Worcester radio station.
Pollard began to feel like an honorary Bostonian, said Carr, and they planned to go to a Red Sox game when they got back from Iraq.
"He was looking to come to Boston and watch a Red Sox game," said Carr. "I clearly remember the e-mail. He said he wanted to propose to his girlfriend of the time at Fenway Park."
Carr remembers the moment he heard the announcement alerting medical personnel that a helicopter carrying a scout platoon had gone down.
"I could only think, 'God, I hope he's not dead. ... It wasn't until early that afternoon that one of the squad leaders from my platoon came up to me and told me he was in the Black Hawk that crashed," he said.
Carr originally wanted to run in support of Homes for Our Troops, a Taunton-based nonprofit that provides homes to severely injured troops. But when he learned that Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary needed runners, Carr found resonance with that cause as well.
"They are looking for a cure so that the blind may see and the deaf may hear. If I couldn't see and I couldn't hear, I would never have met the most amazing human being I've ever met in my life," said Carr, who raised $3,200 for the organization.
This is the third Boston Marathon for Carr, who says he joined the Army three years ago because he wanted to do something different with his life. He is stationed in Oahu, at Schofield Barracks, the Army's largest post in Hawaii, but is frequently deployed to other locations and recently returned from a 12-month tour in Iraq.
He says that Pollard was the kind of person who would try to make others feel comfortable no matter what.
"He taught me to keep going and don't stop," said Carr, "that there's more to accomplish in life, and to treat everyone you meet as if they were your own family member."
Daily News staff writer Anna Kivlan can be reached at 781-433-8336 or at akivlan@cnc.com
