Boston

BOSTON — Eight-year-old Martin Richard was a bright, sunny boy who loved to ride his bike and went “wild” when he played offense on his soccer team, scoring the winning goal in a championship game last year.

Krystle Campbell was the vivacious assistant manager of local steakhouse, the first to backstop fellow workers by running plates from the kitchen. She could instantly smooth over diners’ complaints with her smile.

They were both cheering on the sidelines of the Boston Marathon on Monday when two bombs went off with a thunderous boom and cloud of white smoke, claiming them as the first victims of the blast. Boston University officials confirmed the death of a third person Tuesday: a graduate student who has not been identified.

Friends and family members of the victims were still in shock after Monday’s chaos. Martin’s father, Bill Richard, who was tending to his wife and 6-year-old daughter, who were injured in the blast, released a statement thanking strangers for their prayers.

“We also ask for your patience and for privacy as we work to simultaneously grieve and recover,” he said.

Campbell’s mother, Patty, emerged briefly on the front steps of her family’s modest two-story home in Medford.

“We are heartbroken at the death of our daughter,” Campbell told reporters, her voice shaking between sobs. “This doesn’t make any sense.”

As federal investigators chased leads in the effort to find the perpetrators, doctors at Boston’s trauma centers tended to the more than 170 people wounded in the explosions, many of whom have been released. Dr. George Velmahos, the leader of the trauma team at Massachusetts General Hospital, said that although many of its surgeons trained on the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan, they were confounded by the severity of the injuries they confronted as waves of patients arrived at the emergency rooms Monday.

Some of the patients were in surgery for hours as doctors tried to remove metal fragments, spiky metal pieces that looked like nails without heads, and pellets that had shredded their limbs. But the positive outlook of many of them left Velmahos “moved and really amazed.”

“Some of them woke up today with no legs and told me they were just happy to be alive,” Velmahos said. “Some of them said they thought they were lucky.”

Among the relatives and friends who kept watch at Mass General was 39-year-old Corey Comeau, who was visiting his cousin and his cousin’s girlfriend Tuesday afternoon.
Comeau, a chef at Stephanie’s restaurant on Newbury Street, near what is now a crime scene, said his cousin was “still a little shellshocked” but that his cousin’s 24-year-old girlfriend suffered worse injuries.

“They say they can save her leg,” Comeau said as he stood outside the hospital after visiting.

“I can’t believe I’m even saying that. It’s not normal conversation.” Still, he said, the mood inside the hospital was “much calmer today than last night” with doctors going from patient to patient and conferring with families.

“These are some of the best hospitals in the world. The staff has been unbelievable,” he said.

At the same time, Monday’s chaos bred confusion, as in the case of Krystle Campbell.

Campbell had been watching the marathon alongside her friend Karen, her grandmother Lillian Campbell said, and the family at first believed that she had survived with serious injuries to her legs. But the family learned Tuesday morning that it was Karen who lived.

Lillian Campbell said her granddaughter stopped by her house for the last time last Thursday afternoon, when they drank tea and talked for several hours about work, friends and life.

“She loved being around people. She loved doing things for people,” said Lillian Campbell, 79, who noted that her granddaughter moved in to take care of her after she underwent surgery a few years ago. “She was hard worker. She was bubbly all the time.”

Nick Miminos, who had recently hired Campbell as an assistant manager at Jimmy’s Steer House in Arlington, Mass., said the 29-year-old “had one of those personalities that belongs in hospitality.”

“The wait staff loved working with her,” Miminos said. “She would run food for them, clear the tables for them. She wasn’t just a figurehead. She enjoyed getting her hands dirty.”

Not far away in the Ashmont section of Dorchester, neighbors and friends of the Richard family grieved at a candlelight vigil for young Martin. Bill Richard had been a force in restoring the historic neighborhood. His wife, Denise, who suffered critical injuries Monday, was a librarian at the Neighborhood House Charter School, where Martin and his 6-year-old sister, Jane, were enrolled.

Twins Andreas and Alejandro Calderon, 10, came by the Richard house to place a soccer ball, signed with their names, on the family’s porch. The boys recalled Martin hopping around the playground at recess and unleashing his energy on the soccer field.

“When we put him on defense and goalie he would do good, but he would save his energy so when we put him on offense he would go wild,” said Andreas, whose father coached the team.

Other friends posted their memories of Martin on Facebook and Twitter. Among the more searing images was a picture of Martin, with his gap-toothed smile, holding a blue sign he had made with magic markers.

“No more hurting people,” his sign said. “Peace.”

ALSO:

Boston Marathon bombs: Crude, unsophisticated but still deadly

Dad of 8-year-old Boston bombing victim: ‘Please pray for my family’

After Boston twin bombings, a nation offers its support and solidarity

alana.semuels@latimes.com

molly.hennessy-fiske@latimes.com

andrew.tangel@latimes.com

Also contributing were Times staff writers Maeve Reston and Alan Zarembo in Los Angeles.

As he watched the Boston Celtics play from the stands of TD Garden, one noise kept catching Adel Djellouli’s ear.

“This squeaking sound when players are sliding on the floor is omnipresent,” he said. “It’s always there, right?”

Squeaky shoes are part of the symphony of a basketball game, when rubber soles rasp against the hardwood floors as players jab step, cut and pivot and defenders move their feet to stay in front of their assignment.

Returning home from the game, Djellouli wondered how that sound was produced. And as a materials scientist at Harvard University, he had a way to find out.

Djellouli and colleagues slid a sneaker against a smooth glass plate over and over. They recorded the squeaks with a microphone and filmed the whole thing with a high-speed camera to see what was happening under the shoe.

In a study published Wednesday in the journal Nature, they described what they found. As the shoe works hard to keep its grip, tiny sections of the sole change shape as they momentarily lose then regain contact with the floor thousands of times per second — at a frequency that matches the pitch of the loud squeak we hear.

“That squeaking is basically your shoe rippling, or creating wrinkles that travel super fast. They repeat at a high frequency, and this is why you get that squeaky noise,” Djellouli said.

The grip patterns on the soles may also play a role. When researchers slid blocks of flat, featureless rubber against the glass, they saw a series of chaotic, disorganized ripples but didn’t hear squeaks.

The ridge-like designs on the bottom of your shoes may organize the bursts to produce a clear, high-pitched sound.

Other researchers have studied these kinds of bursts before, but this sneaker study examines friction happening at much faster speeds. And for the first time, it links the speedy pulses with the squeaking sound they produce.

These insights don’t just serve to satisfy the curiosity of a basketball fan. They could also help answer important practical questions. “Friction is one of the oldest and most intricate problems in physics,” wrote physicist Bart Weber in an editorial accompanying the new research. Yet, despite its practical importance, he wrote, “it is difficult to predict and control.”

Understanding friction better could help scientists better understand how the Earth’s tectonic plates slide and grind during earthquakes, for example, or to save energy by reducing friction and wear.

It could also help eliminate moments off the court when squeaky shoes can be a little awkward or embarrassing, such as in a quiet office hallway.

This research doesn’t offer a fix, though the internet has plenty of advice that may be risky, including rubbing soap or a dryer sheet on the soles. But some of the insights from the study could help to design squeak-free shoes in the future.

For example, one additional experiment found that changing the thickness of the rubber could make the squeak sound lower or higher in pitch. In the future, could we fine-tune our shoes to squeak in a pitch so high we can’t even hear it?

“We can now start designing for it,” said Weber, who is with the Advanced Research Center for Nanolithography and the University of Amsterdam, in an interview. “We can start making interfaces that either do it if we want to hear this sound, or don’t do it if we don’t want to hear it.”

Ramakrishnan writes for the Associated Press.

For three decades, the Dropkick Murphys have played their riotous brand of Boston Irish Celtic punk for legions of tattooed, mosh-pitting fans, but it wasn’t until last month that they found a new following among an unlikely demographic: C-SPAN viewers.

Washington policy wonks and political junkies who tuned in to watch former Justice Department special counsel Jack Smith testify before the House last month were treated to lurid details about President Trump’s alleged involvement in 2020 election meddling and the Jan. 6 insurrection. What they didn’t bargain for were the animated actions of former D.C. cop Michael Fanone, who was in the chamber wearing a Dropkick Murphys T-shirt that read “Fighting Nazis Since 1996.”

Fanone, who was brutally attacked by a pro-Trump mob while defending the Capitol in 2021, was impossible to miss. He was seated directly behind Smith and the only guy visible in a band T-shirt. Also notable were his reactions to GOP suggestions that the attack on the Capitol never happened, or was everyone’s fault but Trump’s: He coughed out expletives and flashed colorful hand gestures. Dropkick Murphys T-shirt sales spiked.

“It was this crazy, organic thing,” says Ken Casey, lead singer of the band. “We never put up a poster saying, ‘Hey, wear our shirt!’ But over the course of the next week, we sold like 6,000 of those shirts.” And for those who want one now? The shirt is on back order.

Casey, who speaks in a thick, working-class Boston accent (think “The Departed” meets a Ben Affleck Dunkin’ Donuts commercial), isn’t a stranger to mixing music and politics. He has been outspoken onstage and in the recording studio about his opposition to MAGA’s immigration policy, racist rhetoric and war on the working class. And the band announced Tuesday they’re parting ways with the Wasserman Music agency because the namesake of the agency turned up in the Epstein files.

Casey spoke with The Times about challenging MAGA through the rebellion of punk rock.

The Dropkick Murphys’ “Fighting Nazis Since 1996” T-shirt is a hot item now thanks to its appearance on Capitol Hill, via Fanone. He’s been very active and adamant about countering MAGA’s Jan. 6 narratives, including testifying with his colleagues in front of the House select committee investigating the insurrection.

Ken Casey: “Michael is an old friend. He was at our very first Dropkick show in D.C. in 1996, so it’s not like he’s some kind of jump-on-the-bandwagon guy. I appreciate just how vocal he is. It’s one thing to talk the talk, but it’s another to walk the walk and be showing up at all those events, and really putting himself out there.

But why is it important for the Dropkick Murphys to speak out? You’ve no doubt lost fans.

I hate to say it, but in some ways, MAGA needs to be countered with a mirror of them, like in physical appearance. They love painting themselves as righteous warriors and the rest of the country as immigrants, or whatever other stupid s— they come up with. But it seems to trigger them more when someone like Michael Fanone and the Dropkick Murphys speak up to them because it just like explodes their mind. It’s like, “You’re supposed to be on my side!” It’s like no, remember when you were on our side? Before you got twisted up by this lying con man?

In some ways, no band has more to lose because our fan base is the population that might jump into MAGA. But there is that middle ground — the people who don’t have time for politics. Who don’t follow it as closely as you or I do. They hear things about Biden, hear things about Trump, and it’s like “I don’t know what to believe.” That’s where voices like [mine] are important. You’re hearing it from someone who really doesn’t have skin in the game. I’m an American citizen, not a politician. I don’t have corporate interest involved in this.

And then there’s the new interest in your band, from folks who are just discovering you, or maybe just know your material from film soundtracks like “The Departed” (“I’m Shipping Up to Boston”).

It’s also brought back fans and there’s this [renewed] punk rock urgency and importance to our shows. It’s gained us a lot of new fans, in theory, like people who don’t necessarily listen to punk rock, or who wouldn’t listen to our music or come to our shows, they now speak out and say, “I support Dropkick Murphys for what they’re doing.” It’s support in solidarity. For the [longtime] fans, it’s rekindled this new dedication. It’s reconnected us with some old fans who had drifted away.

What do you say to other music artists who are afraid to speak out against what they see as an injustice or wrongdoing?

We’ve already had every death threat, every friggin’ cancellation threat. So what would we say to other bands and other people who are keeping their head down because they don’t want to deal with all the drama that comes along with speaking up? Come on in. The water is great. There’s nothing to worry about. The [trolls] are a vocal minority — online is bots and paid influencer types. Don’t let anybody silence you.

At this year’s Grammy Awards ceremony, every other acceptance speech contained anti-ICE sentiment, so it does appear that more musicians are speaking out against Trump’s policies.

Listen, if executions in the streets of your citizens [by ICE agents] doesn’t get people to speak out, then nothing will. But it’s nice to finally see there’s a wave starting to peak, out of frustration and realization. I can also tell from the amount of attacks we get that there’s some backpedaling. Obviously, there’ll always be the die-hards — Trump could be molesting someone in front of their eyes, and they’d still stick with him. But there’s a lot of people trying to quietly distance themselves.

Ken Casey of Dropkick Murphys

(Riley Vecchione)

If we’re being historically accurate, the Dropkicks have always had something to say about what’s going on in this country.

The very first line sung on our very first album was in regards to how Reagan started the dismantling of unions and [created a] wealth gap, so we’ve been about it the whole time. We’ve been showing up on picket lines the whole time. Social justice, we’ve always been about it. But before Trump, we weren’t necessarily having to make it a social media presence type of thing. But we’re in a different time now.

The Republicans started to cosplay as working-class white males, and people bought right into it. There’s a portion of this country that is sick and twisted and MAGA has been a great vehicle for them, but then there’s also a big portion of the country that just got caught up in the lies and the bull— and the rhetoric.

Your band is part of a new initiative aimed at getting more punk bands to speak truth to power.

The Dropkick Murphys and Michael Fanone, along with the guys in Rise Against, have started a collaborative called Down for the Cause. It’s basically going to be kind of a punk rock collaborative because years from now, we don’t want punk rock to be disgraced by the silence. Just kind of get involved, not necessarily supporting candidates but more like taking back the air waves let people know that we don’t have to accept this unacceptable behavior. Also reminding people to vote, because if all those people didn’t stay on the sidelines in the last election, we probably wouldn’t be in the mess we’re in now.

Your band just released a new song, “Citizen I.C.E.” But is it new?

The song is actually 20 years old. It was called “Citizen CIA.” It was basically a mock recruitment song for the CIA, poking fun at the damage the CIA has done around the world. Now we flipped it to a mock ICE recruitment song, with lines like “Too scared to join the military, too dumb to be a cop.” It’ll be out on a split album, “New England Forever,” that we did with a younger Boston band called Haywire. We’re touring with them now [ on the “For The People…In the Pit St. Patrick’s Day Tour”].

What do you say to people who say shut up and sing.

I get that even people who aren’t necessarily MAGA don’t want to listen to someone [on a] soapbox. But I view where we are as five-alarm fire, and if you got a microphone in front of your mouth, you better damn well be talking into it.