Associated Files
Title
WBUR Oral History Project: Peter Payack (Full Interview)
Contributor
Payack, Peter (Interviewee)
Guberman, Jayne (Interviewer)
O'Brien, Joanna Shea (Recordist)
McDonough, Ryan (Contributor)
Guberman, Jayne (Interviewer)
O'Brien, Joanna Shea (Recordist)
McDonough, Ryan (Contributor)
Language
English
Date created
March 13, 2014
Type of resource
Sound recording
Genre
Interviews
Oral histories (document genres)
Oral histories (document genres)
Format
Sound Recording
Digital origin
born digital
Abstract/Description
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. Peter Payack, writing professor, poet and community activist, grew up in Boonton, NJ
in a large Italian American family. He graduated from Catholic University, in Washington,
D.C., where he studied philosophy. In 1972, he moved to Cambridge, Massachusetts, where he
embarked on a career in poetry, publishing poems in the The New York Times, Rolling Stone,
Paris Review and Asimov Science Fiction magazine, and authoring fifteen books. Peter became
very active in the Cambridge community, where he helped found the Cambridge River Festival,
First Night, and invented "Phone-A-Poem", a call in poetry line that operated from 1976 to
2001, and is now archived at Harvard University's Lamont Library. In 2007, he was named the
poet populist of Cambridge, and has lectured at University of Massachusetts Lowell and is
currently a professor of writing at Berklee College of Music. Peter is also a conceptual
artist, sky artist and inventor. He is a lifelong athlete, having run the Boston Marathon
twelve times, and for the last fifteen years, has been an assistant wrestling coach at
Cambridge Rindge and Latin High School, where both of his sons wrestled. Sensing a lack of
sporting opportunities for girls, he and a friend started the Cambridge Girls Softball League
in the 1990s. In his interview, Payack reflects on the city of Cambridge, the importance of
community: "In a community, you had to be part of a community. I always say that the Greeks,
the word idiot itself, meant I stand alone, and it was assigned to somebody who didn't partake
in civic life. So it wasn't like you're not smart, it was, you weren't smart because you
didn't take part in civic life." Peter details his relationship with distance running and what
the Boston Marathon means to him. As an adolescent, he played football, wrestled and ran
track, and describes his early relationship with running. He began competing in marathons in
the 1970s, completing 24 marathons, and logging 85,000 running miles total. Peter describes
helping his son to train for his first Boston Marathon in 2013, biking along the route as his
son ran on race day, and what happened when the bombs went off at the finish line. The rest of
the week was marked by the tragic shooting of Officer Sean Collier in the nearby MIT
neighborhood on April 18, 2013, and the release of the photos of the alleged bombers, who
Peter still did not recognize. The interview continues with Peter's shocking discovery that
his former wrestling student and team captain, Dzhokar "Jahar" Tsarnaev, was responsible for
the marathon bombings. A journalist friend contacted him and asked if that was Peter's
wrestler, and when he said yes, a media frenzy began for Peter and his family, with steady
phone calls from national news outlets and news trucks gathering outside his home to hear his
opinion of Jahar's identity. With his wife's guidance, Peter prepared to make a statement
outside his home and decided to tell Jahar to give himself up to the police, 'Jahar, this is
Coach Payack, there's been enough death and destruction, please stop the madness and turn
yourself in.' Later that day, Peter was contacted by the FBI to try and help with the capture
of Jahar, but ultimately Jahar Tsarnaev was found before Peter arrived in Watertown by
bicycle. The FBI agent told Peter that they used his statement to get Jahar to surrender. The
rest of the interview continues with Peter's description of the weeks that followed and how he
came to terms with the idea that the kid he knew so well could commit such atrocities. He
reflects on what kind of person Jahar was as a high school student, and the wrestling team's
relationship with him and how Jahar was a close part of their community. He shares anecdotes
about Jahar, and notes that he never saw his family or his brother at any wrestling meets,
which is especially unusual because if an older brother or relative is an athlete as was
Tamerlan Tsarnaev, the coaches expect, even dread, that relative's over-involvement in the
student's sporting career. Peter's interview concludes with his description of the stress he
experienced in the aftermath with the media firestorm and the subsequent backlash to the
Rolling Stone cover story in July, 2013 in which Peter had been quoted. He reflects on how
Boston and the country was affected, his heartbreak over the death of the marathon victims,
and the importance of peace and community in healing.
Notes
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.
Source note
Peter Payack (Oral History), Jayne Guberman (Oral Historian),
Joanna Shea O'Brien (Recorder), Ryan McDonough (Sound Processing and Editing)
Related item
Our Marathon: The Boston Bombing Digital Archive
Subjects and keywords
Boston Marathon Bombing, Boston, Mass., 2013
Permanent URL
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