Friday, August 16, 2013

It's only a matter of time before 7 year old Boston Marathon victim Jane Richard is taking part in her Irish Step Dancing classes again...


Boston Marathon bombing victim Jane Richard has a spring in her step again.
The 7-year-old Irish step dancer from Dorchester — whose brother Martin was killed and their mother gravely injured by a terrorist’s bomb on April 15 — is strutting and even dancing on the prosthetic leg that replaced the one the little girl lost that day.
“She’s not back at dance class, but when she went to get the leg, she asked for one that does Irish dancing,” said Eileen Dillon Dinn, owner of Clifden Academy of Irish Dance in Milton, where the grade schooler was a student before she lost her left leg in the bombing.
Jane was released from Spaulding Rehabilitation Center a few weeks ago after completing “hundreds of hours of physical therapy,” the Richard family said in a statement yesterday.
“Her strength, balance and comfort with the leg improve every day. Watching her dance with her new leg, which has her weight primarily on the other leg, is absolutely priceless,” the family said.
The whole family stayed together at the Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital as Jane and her mother were treated.
“That was the first time any of us slept at home in our own beds since before the bombings,” the family wrote.
“We left home together on April 15th, and we were determined that none of us would sleep at home until all of us could do so.”
The bombing blinded her mother Denise in one eye, and has left her father Bill with burns and shrapnel wounds. Her older bother Henry, 11, was physically unharmed.
“Jane continues to be an incredible source of inspiration — and exhaustion,” wrote the Richard family. “The loss of her leg has not slowed her one bit or deterred her in any way.”
Both Henry and Jane will return to school in coming weeks.
Dillon Dinn expects nothing less of her determined dancer.
“She’s just one of those really happy kids. You’d know when she came to class. She’d come bounding through the door, she’d go back and put her shoes. She’s just a real vivacious, energetic kid,” Dillon Dinn said.
Classes at Clifden resume next month, and Dillon Dinn hopes her bubbly student will be able to return in time.
“She’s still part of the dance school as far as I’m concerned. I hope she’ll be able to get back up there again,” she said.

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