Fifty years ago, Jon Dana and Chris Troyanos were undergraduates studying athletic training at Northeastern University when professor Kerkor Kassabian — who they called Koko — told them to go volunteer at the finish line of the Boston Marathon.
“And Koko was one of those people that when he said something, you didn’t even bother asking the question — you just did it,” Dana said.
“We first started in 1977,” Troyanos said in a separate interview. “And we’ve not left since.”
Monday’s Boston Marathon will be the friends’ 50th year on the medical team. It will also be their last.
Dana said Troyanos is the reason he’s been volunteering so long. By 1995, Troyanos had become the marathon’s official medical coordinator — a role he held until 2024.
“The very baseline [that] keeps me [coming] back is that Chris is one of my best friends,” said Dana, who was the head athletic trainer at the University of New Hampshire for 40 years. “He knows that if I’m at the race, he can count on me to take care of my area.”
Now, after a combined century of working and volunteering at the marathon, the two have both decided that this year’s Boston Marathon will be their last. Dana said he planned to call it quits a few years back, after a mere 47 years. It’s a long and physically demanding day, the 70-year-old said.
“I’m like, ‘I’m done, I have had enough,’” he recalled. “And it was Chris that said, ‘No, you’ve got to make it to 50 with me.’”
“I basically begged him,” Troyanos remembered. “I think I got on two knees. We started together, so why not end it together? Which is exactly what’s gonna happen. That’s special.”
The job of a medical volunteer at the finish line is not an easy or pretty one.
“It’s just a matter of looking, basically, at gait, at posture, at eyes, at consciousness, at how they’re functioning,” Dana said. “And if you look like you’re struggling functioning, then I’ll ask you how you’re doing. If you are not responsive to that, then I’m going to go ahead and help you.”
For those who aren’t able to support themselves, Dana said his goal is to get to them before they fall.
“Some of them, unfortunately, fall down. Most of them don’t. We’re pretty good about catching them,” he said.
Then, by interviewing them, he said, the medical staff assess “how messed up they are.” They ask questions like, “can you tell you where they are?” and “can you describe what you’re feeling?”
”Lots of cramps, lots pain, lots of dehydration, lots of upset stomachs. But one thing the Boston Marathon taught me though, I used to be really squeamish about people puking. Now I don’t care,” Dana said.
In 1995, the Boston Athletic Association was preparing to meet the medical needs of a supersized event the following year for the 100th Boston Marathon, and they hired Troyanos as a medical coordinator.
“They were going to go from [around] 12,000 people to now 30,000 or 40,000,” Troyanos remembered. “Everything had to change. So they needed someone that medically could work on it and make it happen. And I’ll be honest: I had no experience when it came to that big size of event, that scale. So I did a lot of research.”
Over the years, Troyanos developed a medical plan that coordinated the response of hospitals, EMS, police, fire and medical volunteers. The goal was to meet the needs of even a difficult marathon, like the 2012 race, in which temperatures in the 80s meant they treated some 10% of the marathon’s 30,000 participants.
The extra planning would be crucial in 2013, when hundreds of people were injured when two bombs exploded near the finish line.
“Before the bombs went off, it was a very quiet year for us,” Troyanos said.
Then the explosions happened, and “all hell breaks loose,” he said.
“As I look back, it was difficult. It was shocking,” Troyanos said. “I had to make decisions that I’ve never made before. I was involved in something I’ve never seen before, none of us have ever seen.”
Troyanos is quick to credit the medical professionals and volunteers who worked that day to help the bombing victims. But his friend, Dana, insists it was Troyanos who set them all up to succeed.
“He would never go out of his way to toot his own horn, but he’s the reason why people survived that day,” Dana said.
Dana was at his usual spot at the finish line that day when the first bomb went off nearby. He ran to the victims and did his best to help them, before pivoting to making sure the volunteers he was responsible for were safe.
“My biggest takeaway from it, which I think is pretty normal, is I, for years and years, wish I’d done better,” he said. “I wish I had done more. And at that specific point in time, I did the very best I could.”
The experience has influenced how Dana now prepares for each marathon.
“What I take with me to the race now is different,” he said. “At that race, I had latex gloves and five gauze pads. Now I take tourniquets and compression dressings and I take a lot of stuff that will never come back out again. [But] now I know that the potential exists.”
Troyanos’ last marathon as medical coordinator was two years ago, then he stayed on last year to help with the transition to replace him. This year, he’ll be back one final time in the same way he started: as a volunteer.
“I just think it’s time, you know,” he said. “I’ve done as much as I can. And what I want to do is make sure that I’m leaving a path for the new leadership.”
He says he’s looking forward to being a volunteer again.
“I mean, not making decisions or being the one to be asked to make decisions, that’s kind of freeing in a sense,” Troyanos said. “Two things are going to happen. One, I know I’m going to get emotional at the end. And two, [I’m going to] enjoy it. And now is the time where…I get a chance to say thank you to as many people as I can.”
Among those people, of course, is Jon Dana, his friend of five decades.
