“Trivial Pursuit” fans can add this to their list of facts to know and love: The first person to tweet out the phrase “Boston Strong” didn’t actually hail from Boston or even Massachusetts.
That honor goes to an Ohio man.
Data from the Twitter company show that a school superintendent named Curtis Clough from Canton, Ohio, was actually the first to give Bostonians the motivational buck-up “Boston Strong” in the wake of the terrorist attack at the finish line of the city’s world-famous marathon, USA Today reported.
Mr. Clough said he actually got the phrase from his now-deceased father, Robert Clough, who was a traveling salesman with a route that led through Boston.
“He was a truck and tractor parts salesman, and his territory was Connecticut, Rhode Island, New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts and a little bit of Pennsylvania,” said Mr. Clough, 47, who lives in New Philadelphia, Ohio, USA Today reported. “With his hotel rooms, he would talk about the type of service he would get and how welcoming all the people were. If his car broke down, he knew people he could call. They’d be willing to help at any cost.”
After the bombings, Mr. Clough said he recalled his dad’s use of the phrase “Boston Strong” and thought it would make a fitting tweet.
“I received a notice on my cell phone of the bombing happening,” he said, USA Today reported. “It just felt appropriate because of what was being said on the news and how quickly everybody rallied to it.”
Still, his story doesn’t completely lay to rest the debate over the phrase’s usage. Emerson College students Nicholas Reynolds and Chris Dobens said they actually coined the phrase within hours of the terrorist strike.
Data from the social monitoring and analytics site Crimson Hexagon show that the phrase itself has been used more than 2.18 million times since the bombing.
• Cheryl K. Chumley can be reached at cchumley@washingtontimes.com.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.