Mayor Asks For Acts Of Kindness On 'One Boston Day'
BOSTON (CBS) - The first anniversary of the Boston Marathon bombings last April came with much ceremony. This year, the day will pass with less formality, but with no less emotion.
Boston Mayor Marty Walsh is asking everyone to perform one act of kindness as part of what his office is calling One Boston Day.
Related: One Boston Day Events
"We're asking people to try to go and help people and do something in the spirit of collaboration, the spirit of giving, and asking people throughout the city of Boston to take what was a very sad day and turn it into a very positive," Walsh told WBZ.
One Boston Day, for example, is the reason there's a growing pile of shoes in the lobby of the Downtown Crossing Hyatt. The hotel is collecting them in order to donate 502 pairs - one for each of their rooms - to the Saint Francis House homeless shelter.
"It shows the strength of Boston," explained the Hyatt Regency's General Manager Terry Dunbar. "We've had an outpouring from everybody, our associates have been so generous as have the guests and the local businesses."
On Wednesday, Governor Charlie Baker will join state house staffers in a moment of silence - something he encourages everyone to do - as he reflects on the bombings as well as on the bomber's trial, which the governor says is occupying so many thoughts right now.
"I just think it's a weird act of timing that that ends up concluding about the same time that we come up on this anniversary," Baker said. "I was amazed at the ability of those people every single day to go into that courtroom and relive through the most graphic testimony and visual images you could possibly imagine everything that they went through."
Baker and Walsh will also unveil banners at the Boylston Street locations of both marathon explosions.
At the finish line Tuesday night, there was a blue and yellow strand of knit flowers, marking the two spots where the bombs went off exactly two years ago.
WBZ-TV's Kate Merrill reports
Boston Marathon survivor Patrick Downes says, "I think no matter what, it will be an exhausting day and emotional day."
An anniversary still tough for so many like Patrick Downes and his wife Jess, who both lost legs in the blasts on April 15th. Downes says One Boston Day is "a wonderful contrast, a striking contrast to terror."
For survivor Brittany Loring April 15th is still tough. "The emotions are still raw the month leading up to it are difficult," she says.
She couldn't come back last year, it was too hard, but this year she is at Boston College talking about what happened to her on a panel led by WBZ-TV's Paula Ebben. Loring says she is finally ready to take back the date and loves the whole idea of helping not only to heal, but to grow. "I was really happy to put a positive spin on it," Loring says. "I'm thrilled about it."
For more information visit http://www.onebostonday.org/
WBZ-TV's Kate Merrill and Jim Armstrong contributed to this report.