Maxwell Tucker, a sophomore at Boston University, watched the 2013 Boston Marathon bombings from a hospital bed. All of his friends were moving around the city, but Tucker was confined due to illness. Phone networks were down, and he could not reach anyone. For the next few hours, as the jumbled details were sorted, Tucker could only wait while the injury and death counts accrued.
Four years later, Tucker, now a Somerville resident, is running his second marathon on behalf of the Lingzi Foundation. After BU first-year Graduate School of Arts and Sciences student Lingzi Lu was killed in the bombings, her family organized the foundation on her behalf to memorialize her positive spirit, her aunt Helen Zhao said. Since the 2014 Boston Marathon, the Boston Athletic Association has granted the foundation about 10 bibs each year to sponsor runners in the race.
“Once everything settled, her parents and I thought it would be a good thing to set up a foundation to keep her spirit alive by doing something good to reflect her spirit,” Zhao said.
BU Department of Mathematics and Statistics Chair Tasso Kaper said in the wake of the tragedy, Lu’s spirit has not been forgotten.
“I’d say that everybody remembers her for her spirit,” he said. “She was tremendously giving and caring, and she was really smart.”
Kaper, who was also the department chair in 2013, said Lu’s stable, generous personality made her a cherished classmate to her peers.
“She was somebody whom a number of her classmates relied on quite a bit,” Kaper said. “She was a very stable person emotionally, so I know a bunch of her friends came to her for advice and things like that, on personal matters, and on course and program-related issues and topics. She was a very, very stable and level-headed person, very caring of her friends and also giving of her time to help them.”
Not only was Lu a compassionate colleague, she was also an “outstanding student” who went above and beyond standard master’s student expectations, said Kaper.
Typically, master’s students come for two to three semesters and only take on coursework, perhaps adding on a few in-class projects as well, Kaper said. Lu, however, was already conducting research with a group of Ph.D students.
“[Lu] was an outstanding student in all of her classes,” he said. “She was extremely thorough in terms of preparing all of her homework and being ready for exams. She did extremely well in her courses. She was a really great all-around student.”
BU statistics professor Luis Carvalho taught Lu in his MA 576 Generalized Linear Models class during the Spring 2013 semester. Carvalho echoed Kaper’s description of Lu as a model classmate.
“She was an excellent student,” he said, citing her color-coded, organized notes. “As a person, she was quiet but very sweet, very kind. She was very smart, very bright. A really good student.”
Kaper said Lu’s passing came as a complete shock to the BU community.
“[Her passing] was a complete shock. The probabilities of something like that happening are so small,” he said. “It’s horrible and it’s completely random. I think it took a couple of days for the shock to hit everybody before anybody could even get over it because you also had people trying to figure out what hospitals people were at.”
Kaper said that each year since 2013, he has made an explicit point to hold a moment of silence for Lu during graduation ceremonies.
Kaper and a group of students and faculty visit her grave in Boston each year to commemorate her death.
“[Her death] was really tragic for all of us,” he said. “Obviously not nearly as tragic as for her family, but for a number of her fellow students.”
Carvalho said in his classroom, Lu’s absence left a grieving gap.
“People were very, very upset,” he said. “They missed her very much.”
Carvalho said Lu’s ambition left a legacy that can motivate aspiring students to follow their dreams of coming to the United States to pursue an education.
“I think that [Lu was] a good student who realized what for so many was a dream of coming here to the West,” he said. “She was Chinese and coming here, studying and working hard … She was a very good student, she made good friends and she enjoyed being here.”
Immediately after Lu’s death, BU’s trustees set up a graduate scholarship in her name, Kaper said. This annual scholarship covers tuition for an international student pursuing a master’s degree.
Outside of the classroom, the Lingzi Foundation and its sponsored runners continue to raise both money and awareness for Lu.
Since its establishment, the Lingzi Foundation has strived to “support programs that reflect Lingzi’s passions,” Zhao said.
This includes “her love for food, her love for animals and her academic achievements,” the Rhode Island resident added.
The foundation provides funding for the Boston Police Athletic League, a nonprofit agency that provides programs for Boston’s inner-city youth, Zhao said. The foundation was inspired by one of their sponsored runners from last year who was a Boston Police Department officer.
Last year, Lu’s parents came from China to donate $10,000 to PAL. Zhao said the foundation will continue to fund PAL this year and hopefully set up some scholarships for the kids.
Sponsored runners fundraise on behalf of the foundation on their own, Zhao said.
“Most runners [in years past] have been very touched and honored by the opportunities and were very excited,” Zhao said. “I’m very honored, and [her family] is very honored that there are many people who want to run on behalf of the foundation.”
Tucker first ran for the Lingzi Foundation in 2015, shortly before his graduation from the Sargent College of Health and Rehabilitation Sciences. However, it was not until his Marathon 101 PDP instructor Jennifer Battaglino withdrew from the 2015 race when he saw his opportunity.
“[Battaglino] was connected with the foundation and actually had a bib number and was going to run for them, but then got injured and asked me if I wanted her spot instead,” Tucker said. “I think it was January or February of that year. I agreed, and she gave me her bib number, which was very generous and awesome.”
He credits the foundation with allowing him to run in the race.
Running as a 24-year-old male, Tucker would have to qualify with a time of three hours and five minutes from another race to enter a lottery to enter the Boston Marathon. Having an official Boston Athletic Association charity’s sponsorship waives this requirement for him.
“I would not be able to do it without them, which is why I’m grateful for the opportunity,” he said. “It’s really competitive and difficult. Without the foundation, I definitely would not have been able to do this.”
Tucker said as a member of the BU community in the year that the bombing happened, a current resident and an avid runner, running the Boston Marathon sponsored by the Lingzi Foundation means everything to him.
“I think, sadly, it’s horrible what happened, and it just is really awful, but I’m grateful to be able to contribute to carrying on what she believed in and what she stood for through the foundation,” he said. “It’s kind of the ultimate, quintessential experience I could ask for, running a marathon because it just has so much … meaning behind it. I’m more happy to do it this way [through the foundation’s sponsorship] than qualifying on my own, because it gives a deeper meaning.
Weilong You, 28, of Cary, North Carolina, also ran in the 2017 Boston Marathon on behalf of the Lingzi Foundation.
He found out about the foundation’s search for runners through a friend’s email and thought it was the perfect opportunity.
“I like to run marathons — Boston is great, and I want to do something to help Lingzi’s family,” he said. “I just feel very lucky and honored to do this. I want people to know about this foundation, what happened to her.”
In contrast to Tucker, he is a seasoned marathon runner and said he has run six marathons before. By running for the foundation, You said he hopes to spread peace and carry on Lu’s positivity and ambition.
“I want to memorialize what a good person she was and let people remember this tragedy that happened,” You said. “I hope more people will know about her and how great of a person she was. I want more people to care about the foundation and what it’s doing to help.”
You said the foundation’s memorialization of Lu’s positive spirit is vital on a large scale.
“One more thing about the meaning for running: what happened to Lingzi, that was a terrorist activity,” he said. “They want to bring us overwhelming fear. They want to divide us. I want solidarity and [to] encourage that as a response to terror. We shouldn’t fear it.”
