Story by Gregory Hall
4 a.m. Marathon Monday. April 16, 2018.
It’s race day. Maggie Skillman, all five feet of her, wakes up and her dad makes the same breakfast she has eaten every Saturday morning for the past four months: half a sesame bagel with half an avocado, two eggs and a pear. Maggie packs her stuff up – neon green New Balances, an orange and blue checkered race tank top and her race bib, No. 26592 – and they take off for the Westin Hotel in downtown Boston where a shuttle awaits to take her to the starting line. It’s 4:45 a.m.
Maggie spent the night without any nerves concerning the physical means of running 26.2 miles. She trained for four months. She has full confidence in her ability. Instead, she was concerned about what she was going to wear. She chose her outfit three weeks in advance. She was prepared for hot weather, slightly cool weather, even freezing weather, but she was not prepared for the weather on the 16th of April.
While driving to the Westin, a combination of sleet and rain buffets her dad’s front windshield. Strong gusts of wind cause the truck to sway back and forth along the highway. In 122 years, the Boston Marathon has never been cancelled due to weather and it isn’t going to start now. Maggie’s dad drops her off at the Westin and she steps out into 37-degree air. The rain doesn’t show any signs of letting up.
6 a.m. Maggie arrives at a Masonic Lodge in Hopkinton, Mass.; the location of the starting line.
9 a.m. The 18-year-old wakes up from her three-hour nap, throws the towels she used as blankets off of her body and precedes to eat breakfast No. 2, the same as breakfast No. 1.
10 a.m. Team dedication time.
Maggie is a part of Miles for Miracles, a running organization associated with Boston Children’s Hospital. Every Saturday morning leading up to race day, the team would get together for its weekly long run along the Boston Marathon course. Before the run, a member of the team would dedicate the run to their patient partner. The runner would talk about that partner, their condition and why they were running for them. These were extremely moving and Maggie had never dedicated a run. Race day was her chance.
She stands on a table in front of about 200 people and dedicates the race to her patient partner, George Phinney, a four-year-old kid who is non-verbal, has extremely limited mobility, suffers from hydrocephalus and a slew of other issues. Picture a severe cerebral palsy patient and that’s similar to George, but not quite. George is George.
After moving the room to tears, people come up to Maggie and thank her for her dedication. They write ‘Team Georgie’ on their arms and race bibs and now are running for him along with their original partner.
Maggie is now ready to run.
11:15 a.m. This is Maggie’s designated start time. All of the charity runners are in wave four, which starts at 11:15. Due to the insanity of the weather, the race officials make it so the runners are given a 15-minute window and can begin the race any time from 11:15 to 11:30.
Maggie warms up with her friend, Deshanthi Perera. They are walking, getting their muscles as warmed up as they can in what is now 40-degree weather. They walk over a random ridge, having no idea they have done. “Oh my God, that’s the start line,” Maggie says. “I guess we should start running.”
With her dark brown hair pulled back in a ponytail and her navy rain coat nearly soaked all the way through, Maggie starts the race.
She could’ve been miserable for the next 26.2 miles. She could’ve joined in with so many others who run by like walking dead. Saying the weather is miserable is an understatement. Professional marathoners who are getting paid to run the race are dropping out.
Not Maggie.
The race is lined with spectators two rows deep. The previous races Maggie attended as a spectator, the sidelines went six rows deep, if not more. The energy is different on her race day. The onlookers aren’t filled with the same buzzing energy, yet it is still the Boston Marathon and the ‘Boston Strong’ mentality still exists.
“I was really relying on the crowds and screaming at people and being like, ‘I can’t hear you! Let’s go! It’s Marathon Monday. Please cheer for me. I need you!’” Maggie said.
When the crowds should’ve been yelling at her, she is the one yelling at them. She is the one filled with energy. She isn’t going to let the weather ruin the best day of her life.
“You watch people running by and they’re all just running a marathon, but not Maggie,” Sarah Skillman, Maggie’s mom, said while holding back tears. “She ran by like it was 65 and sunny. I mean, she was just in her glory.”
Before the race, one of the texts Maggie received said, ‘Bring your own sunshine.’
She didn’t despise being there. She didn’t grimace. She didn’t look miserable. She didn’t look like a zombie while trudging through ankle-deep water in Natick at Mile 10. She didn’t let the pain get to her. She didn’t let the fact that she couldn’t feel her fingers bring her down. Quitting wasn’t an option.
She brought her own sunshine, and she’s brought it ever since she fought for her life 18 years earlier.
***
Margaret Murphy Skillman was born on March 2, 2000. She weighed one pound and 12 ounces.
Her mother had a normal, relatively easy pregnancy. She had one bout of morning sickness and no other complications. At the time, her husband, Steve Skillman, was an MBA student at Kenan-Flagler Business School at the University of North Carolina. While on Christmas break, Sarah was about five weeks pregnant. Steve’s mom took one look at Sarah and said, ‘You’re much too big. You’re having twins.’ Steve’s older brothers were twins, so Grandma Skillman might have been onto something, but Sarah and Steve both brushed it off and just thought it was Sarah’s petite build that made her belly appear larger than with most pregnant women.
Twelve weeks into the pregnancy, Sarah was finally able to schedule her first ultrasound at UNC Hospital. Another nine weeks go by and she went in for that first appointment.
And then they found out that Grandma Skillman was right.
Sarah was carrying twins. The simple, easy-going pregnancy was turned upside down.
Six weeks later, Sarah started having contractions and these didn’t feel like Braxton Hicks. These were the real deal. She and Steve went to the hospital. Sarah was dilated enough and the contractions were too close together. The twins were coming…three months early.
What happened next is mostly a blur to Sarah. Every nurse moved so quickly. She was given an injection to help the twins’ lungs develop, a steroid and a magnesium sulfate injection to slow her contractions. There needed to be another steroid given three days later, so the twins would not be delivered right away. The magnesium held them off for three days.
It was a leap year and the date was Feb. 28. Every other mom in that hospital wanted to have their baby as soon as possible to avoid Feb. 29, the leap day. Every mom, except Sarah.
March 2, 2000, Margaret and Caroline Skillman were introduced into the world. Caroline was perfectly normal, but Margaret wasn’t breathing.
The nurses revived her and the one pound, 12-ounce newborn spent the next two weeks on a ventilator fighting for her life. The girls both spent the first three months of their lives at UNC Children’s Hospital, every day an uncertainty.
“I sort of had this calmness about me and I don’t know why because it was definitely touch and go, but I just knew,” Sarah said. “My parents are almost evangelical, religious, and I wasn’t faithful myself, but I sort of felt like I knew. I knew God was going to take care of them and they were going to be protected, and that we would make it through.”
***
Maggie grew up 45 minutes southeast of Boston in Hingham, Mass. She has been a lifelong pulmonology patient at Boston Children’s Hospital in order to keep tabs on her respiratory system.
The only lingering effect of Maggie’s premature birth is asthma. There isn’t any scientific evidence linking the two, but her pulmonologist believes it’s from spending two weeks on a ventilator.
“To remember to take five inhalers when I wake up and when I go to bed is a really small price to pay for what I’m able to do and what Boston Children’s has helped me with the life they’ve given me,” Maggie said, “So, I’m really grateful for that.”
The care Maggie received allowed her to start figure skating when she was four. It allowed her to start ice hockey when she was seven. It allowed her to start playing lacrosse when she was 10. It has allowed her to play practically every sport except horseback riding, but that was because of a battle with her parents, not due to her asthma.
The care allowed Maggie to start running cross-country at Thayer Academy her freshman year of high school. That’s when she first began to enjoy running.
Growing up in Boston, she knew the Boston Marathon was special. She saw first-hand by going to watch her older cousin, Rachel Lavoie, run in the race, but she never thought she would become a marathoner.
The first time she watched Rachel, Maggie and her family were at the top of Heartbreak Hill, along the edge of Boston College’s campus. It’s called ‘Heartbreak Hill’ because it’s at Mile 20, the point where your body starts to break down, and it’s the final hill after four miles of constant rolling hills.
“When you’re there, on either side of the road you’re packed six rows of people deep for the race,” Maggie explained. “That was the first time I was aware of how big a deal the Marathon is in my city.”
Maggie’s first official long-distance run was the Hyannis Half-Marathon in February 2017 during her junior year in high school.
What’s special about this race is you can choose to do the first 13.1 miles of the 26.2-mile marathon course or the second 13.1 miles. Maggie ended up doing the latter half.
“I finished the race,” Maggie said, “and I was like, ‘It was honestly easier than I was expecting. I basically made up what I was doing day-by-day. I think if I got a coach, I could definitely do a marathon.’”
Fast-forward two months later to Marathon Monday, April 17, 2017. It was cloudy with temperatures in the mid-60s; perfect running weather.
Maggie was at a lacrosse game at Trinity College. One of her cousins was a freshman there and her family made the two-hour trip to watch him play.
“I remember being so mad, not because I wasn’t at Heartbreak Hill or wasn’t on Boylston Street by the finish line watching the Marathon,” she said. “I remember being really mad that I wasn’t running in it.”
She made her decision that day. Maggie was going to run in the Boston Marathon.
***
There are two ways to qualify for the Boston Marathon.
The first option is running a qualifying time on a designated Boston Marathon qualifying course. For Maggie, a 17-year-old girl, that would mean running in under three-and-a-half hours.
She didn’t want to do that because she was worried she would run the marathon to qualify and end up hating it and not want to run another one. If she was going to run a marathon, it was going to be the Boston Marathon.
The second option is being a charity runner, and there was one, and only one, charity that Maggie wanted to run for: Boston Children’s Hospital.
The only problem with trying to get a charity race bib is that it’s the harder of the two options. Approximately 36,000 marathoners run in the Boston Marathon every year. 5,000 are charity runners.
For the Miles for Miracles team that runs for Boston Children’s Hospital, the number gets even smaller.
Jess Lloyd, former co-director of the Miles for Miracles team, said they saw well over 1,000 applications the year Maggie applied. There are 160 spots.
“When Maggie applied, she was 17, and normally – being completely transparent – we would just never even give someone of her age a second glance,” Lloyd explained. “Just because they normally don’t have the means to fundraise a ton for the hospital.”
The application process opened on Sept. 12. Maggie submitted her application the same day.
How could the hospital not take her? Here is a kid who was born needing resuscitation and has been a patient at Boston Children’s her entire life. Maggie wrote that the reason she could even think about running a marathon is because of the care she had received at that hospital throughout her life.
The minimum fundraising requirement is $5,500. Maggie committed herself to raising $10,000.
But she was still just a 17-year-old kid, 12 years younger than the next oldest charity runner Miles for Miracles accepted. She didn’t have a job. Her friends didn’t have jobs.
But Maggie brought her own sunshine.
She emailed Miles for Miracles every three weeks.
She emailed about how she raised $3,500 for a fundraising event at her high school when they raised $500 at the same event the year before. She emailed them when she was leaving a check-up at the hospital and going on a run afterward. She would put, ‘Isn’t that awesome?’ in the email. It was a fine line between persistence and annoyance.
On December 8, Maggie’s life changed.
It was a normal day. She was in-between classes walking from math class to AP Biology. She checked her email, and that’s when the tears started flowing.
“I just started crying in the hallway; I was so excited,” Maggie said. “I walked into bio and was so happy and my teacher was like, ‘What is going on? Are you okay?’ and I was like, ‘I’m going to run the Marathon this spring!’”
On December 19, Maggie made her first social media post announcing she was fundraising money for Boston Children’s Hospital and would be running the marathon in April.
In her family’s Christmas card, Maggie included a baby photo of her on a ventilator and a message explaining why she was running the marathon, why Boston Children’s Hospital means so much to her and asking for donations. Maggie told her story and explained her goal of giving back to the hospital that gave her her life. She reached her goal of $10,000 on February 15.
By the time she was finished fundraising, Maggie raised $17,375 for the hospital.
“I can’t truly say that I’m proud of her in the true definition of the word pride,” Steve said. “I have to say that I admire her because she did most of it.”
Four months and $17,375 fundraised led to four hours, three minutes and 42 seconds of running over the course of 26.2 miles.
Sunshine plus altruism is a powerful combination.
***
When Maggie was one year old, the Skillmans lived in Belmont, Mass., 20 minutes west of Boston.
Maggie waddled into a store called, ‘The Toy Store of Belmont.’ Adjacent to the entrance is a bin filled with different colored and sized rubber balls. She took a ball out of the bin, found a kid in the store, and hand-delivered a ball. She waddled back, grabbed another ball and found a different kid and delivered it. When Maggie was finished, every single kid and every single adult in the store had a colored rubber ball in their hands.
“Even at that age, she was just truly a compassionate, thoughtful little kid,” Steve said. “Looking back, the fact that she’s interested in nursing, interested in this little boy George, I think that story exemplifies that.”
Maggie’s high school, Thayer Academy, requires every senior to complete a senior project during the month of May. Her senior project was George. Her classmates were at law firms or financial service companies to start thinking about their future careers. Not Maggie. She was with George.
Every day, she drove 90 minutes to Andover, Mass., ate breakfast with George and his dad, went to pre-school with him until the early afternoon, babysat him until three o’clock, went to his horse therapy where he worked on core stabilization with his horse, Kaiser, and then she would come home.
“His daily life became my daily life, which I loved so much,” Maggie said. “I wish I could still do that.”
Maggie brought her sunshine for George every day.
“George is one of my best friends,” she said. “He’s my little brother now. I love him so much and I don’t think the race would have been the same if I hadn’t been running for him.”
***
Maggie’s life-long dream was being a student at North Carolina.
On Jan. 27, 2018, she got an email from UNC admissions notifying her that there was an update on her Connect Carolina guest account. The decisions were supposed to come out on the 31st, so Maggie just thought it was going to be instructions on how to view the school’s decision.
She opened the email on Boylston Street in downtown Boston, near the location of the Boston Marathon’s finish line.
“Dear Margaret,
We regret to inform you…”
Next came the tears and sobs.
When she got that email, Maggie realized UNC was the only school she wanted to go to. She was destroyed, but she threw herself into training for the marathon and fundraising for Boston Children’s.
She had to bring her own sunshine.
She enrolled at Trinity College in Hartford, Conn. for her freshman year because it was the best school that accepted her. She devoted herself to being the best student she could be in order to transfer to UNC the following year, the same way she devoted herself to the marathon, devoted herself to George and devoted herself to handing a ball to every person in that toy store.
One year later, Maggie received a similar email from UNC admissions. She couldn’t open it up. She was about to go on a run at the gym and she knew she’d either be too devastated to run or too excited, so she waited. It was a display of self-control that still shocks her to this day.
She went on her run, and then she opened the email in her car in the parking lot with her parents on the phone.
“Dear Margaret,
Congratulations!”
Cue the tears part two, but these were happy tears.
Maggie was a Tar Heel.
***
Maggie played lacrosse from fourth grade through the end of her junior year of high school. Why didn’t she play her senior year? She chose the marathon. She chose to give back to her hospital. She chose George.
Despite not playing, UNC offered her as a preferred walk-on. If she could get into the school, she could be a member of the team. But that was no longer her dream.
Maggie deemed the lacrosse chapter of her life closed. That’s why she didn’t play at Trinity, and when she transferred to Chapel Hill, she wasn’t planning on playing. Walking around Polk Place, drinking from the Old Well on the first day of class, rushing Franklin Street, receiving a nursing degree from the University of North Carolina. Those were her dreams.
Her spot on the team, as her mom put it, “fell in her lap.” A few of her friends from past lacrosse camps who were on the team saw her on campus one day and let Phil Barnes, the assistant coach, know Maggie was at UNC. Barnes reached out to Maggie to tell her that the offer still stood. A spot as a goalie was hers if she wanted, and so she took it.
Fast-forward to 3 p.m. Saturday, Feb. 1, 2020.
UNC is taking on Elon in a pre-season exhibition match.
Steve and Sarah had traveled to Dorrance Field, just as they planned to for as many games as possible during the regular season to see Maggie play. Maggie is the third-string goalie, but UNC constantly dominates its opponents so Barnes had assured her that she would get her time on the field.
“We got there early to watch warmups, and she came jogging out of the tunnel onto the lacrosse field in a Carolina uniform, and I got really choked up then,” Steve said. “I think it all sort of hit home.”
Less than a mile away from where Steve Skillman stood watching his daughter warm up in Carolina blue is UNC Children’s Hospital. If you look through the trees the right way, as you’re able to do in February before the leaves grow back, you can see the buildings; the buildings where, 20 years ago, Maggie fought for her life.
The buildings where, 20 years ago, Maggie was born three months premature. The buildings where, 20 years ago, Maggie needed a machine to breathe for her for the first two weeks of her life. The buildings where, 20 years ago, Sarah and Steve weren’t sure if their baby girl was going to survive.
But now, here she is, 20 years later, after having been an athlete her entire life, after raising $17,375 for Boston Children’s Hospital and after running the Boston Marathon, Maggie is on Dorrance Field, warming up for the No. 1 lacrosse team in the nation, for the school she dreamed of attending.
Her dad couldn’t help but let the emotions out as he watched his loyal, thoughtful, spunky, effervescent baby girl less than a mile from where it all started.
That day, a cold, cloudy February day, Maggie brought her sunshine for him.
