WBUR Oral History Project: Suzzette Chiong-Oglesby

Chiong-Oglesby, Suzzette (Interviewee)

O'Brien, Joanna Shea (Interviewer)
McDonough, Ryan (Contributor)

English

March 20, 2014

Sound recording

Interviews
Oral histories (document genres)

Sound Recording

born digital

Countless lives were affected by the 2013 Boston Marathon bombings and their aftermath. The WBUR Oral History Project collects stories from individuals whose lives were immediately and irrevocably changed by these events. Thanks to the generous sponsorship of WBUR, our team of oral historians, and the participation of these interview subjects, Our Marathon has tried to ensure that these stories are not forgotten. We believe that these stories matter, and that they demonstrate the ways historical events transform the lives of the people who lived through them. Oral historians Jayne K. Guberman, Ph.D., and Joanna Shea O'Brien conducted the interviews for this project. Oral History Project Manager Kristi Girdharry, Our Marathon Project Co-Director Jim McGrath, and Community Outreach Lead Joanne DeCaro recorded the interviews and provided research assistance and post-interview processing. McGrath and Our Marathon Audio Technician Ryan McDonough provided sound editing and processing for all of the interviews and clips. The opinions and statements expressed in interviews and related content featured in the WBUR Oral History Project do not necessarily reflect the opinions of Our Marathon, WBUR, Northeastern University, or any employees or volunteers affiliated with these institutions and projects. Our Marathon and The WBUR Oral History project make no assertions about the veracity of statements made by participants in this project. Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital played a critical role in the rehabilitation of many of the most seriously injured survivors of the bombings, including 15 amputees (two of whom were double amputees). They managed the opening of their new facility in the Boston Navy Yard just days after the bombings with the admission and care for dozens of patients and intense media attention, both of which continued for several months. Many of their staff were personally affected as they were runners on the Spaulding marathon charity team or were waiting near the finish line to support the team and witnessed the bombings. Our Marathon's WBUR Oral History Project sought to collect a cross-section of interviews from Spaulding staff to chronicle how the rehabilitative care of marathon bombing survivors was an integral part of the city's response to violence and mass trauma. Suzzette Chiong-Oglesby is the Clinical Nurse Manager in the Comprehensive Rehab Unit at Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital Boston. She has been at Spaulding for 35 years. She works on the fifth floor of the hospital, which is a floor for amputee, burn, and muscular skeletal injuries. Her son Sam was running for the Spaulding Marathon Team, and Suzzette went to work early in the morning before meeting her husband at the Mandarin Hotel on Boylston Street for the Spaulding Team marathon party. She vividly describes looking out the large glass window of the hotel, excited at the prospect of watching her son finish the marathon, when the bomb in front of the Forum restaurant detonated. She describes the next hour, including her panic, her uncertainty about what had actually happened, her extreme worry over her son's safety, and how she helped a shivering and traumatized runner. Suzzette then talks about her work in the days, weeks, and months after the Boston Marathon bombing, as she and her nursing team at Spaulding confronted new challenges and found inspiration in treating the survivors of the bombs.

The opinions and statements expressed in interviews and related content featured in the WBUR Oral History Project do not necessarily reflect the opinions of Our Marathon, WBUR, Northeastern University, or any employees or volunteers affiliated with these institutions and projects. Our Marathon and The WBUR Oral History project make no assertions about the veracity of statements made by participants in this project.

The WBUR Oral History Project. Suzzette Chiong-Oglesby (Oral History), Joanna Shea O'Brien (Oral Historian and Recorder), Ryan McDonough (Sound Processing and Editing)

Our Marathon The Boston Bombing Digital Archive

Boston Marathon Bombing, Boston, Mass., 2013

Northeastern University Library

In Copyright. This Item is protected by copyright and/or related rights. You are free to use this Item in any way that is permitted by the copyright and related rights legislation that applies to your use. For other uses you need to obtain permission from the rights-holder(s). http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/
Requests for permission to publish material should be addressed to Northeastern University Library's Digital Scholarship Group (dsg@neu.edu).