Scott Oxhorn

Children and their parents gathered in Dorchester, Mass., last weekend to paint a 100-foot-long banner in memory of Martin Richard, the 8-year-old boy killed in last week's bombings at the Boston Marathon.

BOSTON -- With song, brushes and buckets of paint, children in Boston are using the arts to try to express feelings about last week's marathon bombings for which even their parents do not have words.

"Painting for Peace” was inspired by 8-year-old Martin Richard, the youngest person killed in the attack near the finish line of the Boston Marathon. Parents and their children turned out last weekend in Dorchester, Mass., the Richard family's home, to paint a 100-foot-long roll of wallpaper with swirls of color and the message held up on an art project by the gap-toothed boy in a picture that went around the world last week: "No more hurting people. Peace."

"It was just the most obvious message that was on everybody's minds," said Liz Carney, who organized the project with her group Dot Art. "We were seeing that image and that message everywhere. A message about peace had a really important place in our response, in our community."

The sign now greets drivers passing under the Savin Hill Bridge over Interstate 93 heading into Boston. About 25 to 50 volunteers of all ages showed up to help create the banner, cards and other paintings and drawings over the weekend, Carney said.

"It was really a very heartfelt expression of peace and solidarity by our neighborhood," Carney said. "I had a lot of parents say how grateful they were to bring their kids to be a part of it, that the children in our community sometimes need a place to express things that are beyond words, and using their hands and having a place to tangibly put their energy is really important."

Boston-area children have turned to art projects like this one in Dorchester to help heal the wounds left by last week's marathon bombings.

Martin Richard’s sister Jane, 7, is among the 425 children from across the city who take singing lessons with the Boston City Singers. Not all of the youngest singers know all the details about the deadly blasts, but they know Jane was among the more than 260 people injured in the attack. Jane Richard lost a leg in the explosions; the children's mother, Denise, was seriously injured.

When a group of 4-to-6-year-old singers went back to Boston City Singers on Wednesday, parents were invited to stay if they wanted, managing director Melissa Graham said. Everything went well even when one little boy had a question about their missing classmate she said.

"One little boy said, 'Janie got hurt, is she going to be OK?'" Graham said. "And the conductor said, 'Yes, Janie is going to be OK. That was just an accident. Janie got hurt, she is going to be OK.'"

Boston City Singers charges tuition but does not turn away children on a financial basis, and makes up for costs with fundraising and grants, Graham said. The same way the children forget about whose parents have more money while making a song together, she said, maybe they will forget about the bombings for a little while when the youth choral group performs at "Children Sing for Peace" on Saturday at St. Mark Church in Dorchester.

The concert, which includes the Cambridge Children's Chorus and other local singing groups, will be about community and not about the bombs allegedly set off by brothers Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev. Other singers will come from the local Neighborhood House Charter School, which Jane and Martin attended and where their mother works.

"Song is one of those things that unites people," Graham said. "It gives the community a chance to feel like they are doing something."

The same need for expression was clear to Margery Buckingham when children came into the Dorchester Arts Collaborative on Tuesday. She said the week of arts and crafts she had planned for the 8-to-12-year-olds would not continue as though nothing had happened.

"One little girl said how she didn't sleep all night because she was so frightened," said Buckingham, education director at the collaborative, which fosters the arts in Dorchester.

Heidi Katz, an arts therapist from nearby Roxbury, Mass., came in on Thursday, Buckingham said. She did drawings and spoke with the children, and brought rhythm instruments for them to play. She asked the children where they felt safe.

"With most of our children it was at home and in church," Buckingham said. "And one little girl said, 'In my heart.'"

Buckingham called parents to let them known beforehand that the arts therapist would be coming, in case they did not want their children to participate. All the children showed up, and parents sent two more.

"It's something we have to do again," Buckingham said. "These feelings aren't going to go away."

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Courtesy Alyssa Loring

New England Patriots' running back Stevan Ridley and tight end Rob Gronkowski visited Brittany Loring on Monday in her hospital room and signed a jersey for her. Loring suffered multiple injuries in last week's bombing at the Boston Marathon.

BOSTON – Nine days after the Boston Marathon bombings killed three people and injured more than 260 others, at least one survivor is on the long road to recovery.

Brittany Loring, who was celebrating her 29th birthday last Monday when the bombs went off, suffered serious damage to her left leg in the twin explosions allegedly carried out by brothers Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev – who lived less than a mile from Loring and her fiancé, John McLoughlin, in Cambridge, Mass.

Wounds reveal part of the damage: She was left with small pellet-sized wounds across her body, some red, others black. But she also suffered a cracked skull, a concussion, and had to endure three “cleaning” surgeries to help prevent infection from her shrapnel wounds, said McLoughlin.

In the immediate aftermath of the attacks, it wasn’t clear if she would be able to walk again. But that changed Tuesday.

“She's starting to walk on her crutches, still in a lot of pain, and on heavy medication,” her dad, Dan Loring, a 53-year-old real estate agent, said late Tuesday. “She's looking good. She actually wore clothes today and did her hair.”

McLoughlin has been keeping a constant vigil at Brittany’s bedside, taking leave from his work as a loan officer to focus on her recovery and spend time in what he quips is their “little hotel room.”

“She's half the team, so I've got to be here,” he said Wednesday. The couple plan to wed in September. “Her spirits are good,” he said. “She's still up and down, but overall she's better.”

Boston Medical Center said Wednesday her condition was fair. It's not clear yet when Brittany will leave the hospital, but when she does, she will need physical and mental health therapies, he said.

“She wakes up in the middle of the night. She has nightmares,” McLoughlin said. He believes they are all related to the bombings, but he hasn’t asked for details. “We wake up a couple of times a night. She's startled, and I try to get her back to bed.”

Her family hasn’t been speaking to her about the bombings and what happened at the finish line of the marathon.

David Friedman / NBC News

John McCloughlin (left) and Dan Loring talk about the injuries sustained by Brittany Loring in the Boston Marathon bombings. McCloughlin is engaged to Brittany and Loring is her father.

“We're not bringing that in at this point,” said Loring, of Lancaster, Mass. “We're trying to build up her stamina – you know she had three surgeries in six days and ... the heavy medication. So trying to get her to eat, think positive thoughts.”

“We have told her she's safe but that's it,” McLoughlin said. “We don't think it's good for her recovery” to talk about it.

Besides getting back on her feet again, Brittany recently had other good news: Boston College has said she will graduate this spring with a joint degree in business and law, waiving her final exams and some last assignments. 

“She's very strong. She'll move on. This will be a blip in the past,” McLoughlin said. “I hope a year from now we're all good.”

This story was originally published on Wed Apr 24, 2013 6:44 PM EDT

Two firefighters who survived an ambush in upstate New York that killed two of their colleagues said Thursday they were "humbled and a bit overwhelmed" by well wishes in the wake of the tragedy as more details emerged of the deadly attack.

West Webster volunteer firefighters Joseph Hofstetter and Theodore Scardino, who had been in guarded condition, were upgraded to satisfactory condition on Wednesday at Rochester's Strong Memorial Hospital.

As authorities continued their investigation into the assault that William Spengler, 62, carried out on the volunteers responding to a blaze in Webster early Monday, the hospital released a statement from the survivors.

The pair said their "thoughts and prayers" were with the families of their colleagues Michael Chiapperini, 43, and Tomasz Kaczowka, 19, who were shot dead at the scene. They were also "humbled and a bit overwhelmed by the outpouring of well wishes for us and our families," the statement said. 

Chiapperini was killed by a single gunshot wound, while Kaczowka died as a result of two gunshot injuries, according to autopsy results released by New York State Police on Thursday afternoon.

Spengler, who was convicted of killing his grandmother in 1980, died of a self-inflicted gunshot to the head, police said in a statement. He shot himself as seven houses burned around him.

'Multiple firemen down'
"We are being shot at," an unidentified voice told a 911 dispatcher in a recording aired Wednesday on NBC's TODAY. "Multiple firemen down. Multiple firemen are shot. I am shot. I think he is using an assault rifle."

Hofstetter and Scardino were shot during the chaos. One was struck by a bullet in the pelvis and the other in the chest and knee, NBCNewYork.com reported. 

Police said Spengler left a three-page typewritten note saying he wanted to burn down the neighborhood and "do what I like doing best, killing people."

“He was equipped to go to war, kill innocent people," Webster Police Chief Gerald Pickering told reporters Tuesday.

The Rochester Democrat and Chronicle said Wednesday that the funeral for Chiapperini, who was a 20-year veteran of the Webster Police Department, will be Sunday, while a funeral Mass for Kaczowka, who graduated from high school last year, will be held in Rochester at 10 a.m. ET Monday.

John Ritter, a police officer with the nearby Greece, N.Y., police department, came across the fire while on his way to work early Monday. He stopped, waiting to see if the firefighters would direct him around the scene, when he suddenly heard a large blast and then discovered a hole in his windshield, The Rochester newspaper reported. His vehicle was struck a second time.

“At that point I didn’t know what it was. I didn’t know if it was shrapnel from the fire. I sat there, I checked my body to see if I was injured -- I wasn’t -- and then I heard multiple rounds going off,” he said late Wednesday at a press conference.

He made his way over to where firefighters were trying to put out the blaze and warned them that someone was shooting. He told the newspaper his main goals were to take cover, get out of the “kill zone” and keep people from that area. Though he called his role “peripheral,” police have said he helped to protect others.

“There’s no way to defend an ambush,” said the nearly 24-year veteran of the Greece police force, who did not open fire. “I am driving to work ... I don’t have any tools of my trade with me. I don’t have body armor, I don’t have long range weapons, I don’t have my radio, I don’t have anything, and I am in a situation where someone is actively engaging me.”

Ritter said words couldn’t describe his feelings, which included survivor’s guilt. “I don’t know why I’m still here, other than there was some type of divine intervention that kept that round from penetrating through my car and hitting something else.”

Spengler had lived in the house with his sister and his mother, Arline, who died in October at 91. Arline Spengler's obituary asked that memorial donations be made to the West Webster Fireman's Association.

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A former neighbor told The Associated Press that Spengler "loved his mama to death" and that he "couldn't stand" his sister. The neighbor said he thought Spengler "went crazy" after his mother died.

Spengler, the gunman, was convicted of manslaughter in 1981 after the death of his grandmother, Rose Spengler, 92, and was paroled in 1998. He remained under parole supervision until 2006, the Democrat and Chronicle reported. Before Monday's shooting, Webster police hadn't had any run-ins with Spengler since he was paroled, they said.

Police investigating the killings said Tuesday that they had found what appeared to be human remains at the gunman's home. Authorities said they believed those were of Spengler’s 67-year-old sister, Cheryl, who lived with him.

Although Spengler couldn't legally own firearms as a convicted felon, police said he was armed with a Smith & Wesson .38-caliber revolver, a 12-gauge pump shotgun and a Bushmaster .223-caliber rifle, the same kind used in the Newtown, Conn., school massacre in mid-December. Authorities are tracing the history of the weapons and how Spengler obtained them, state police said.

At least 33 people were displaced by the fire, which engulfed at least seven homes and a motor vehicle.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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