OKC Bombing Remembered

Fifteen years ago today, the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City was bombed. Until 2001 it was the most devastating terrorist act on American soil. 168 people killed and 19 of those were children in a daycare.

See, how am I going to explain this to you? How to I explain hatred? How do I explain this violence? How to I explain? My parents' generation has stories of where were they when John F. Kennedy was shot. My generation has this on a local scale and September 11, 2001 on a national scale. So, where was I April 19, 1995? I was in Mrs. Brixey's classroom getting ready for second period Spanish class. I was a freshman in high school. I didn't know anything had happened until lunchtime. I had went home for lunch with some friends and my mom had told us and we saw it on the news. We were worried about our friends and classmates who were in the city at the time for a TSA (Technology Students Association) convention. Your father and aunt "T" were among those in the city. After getting back to school, we learned the teacher with them had called in to the school and said they were safe and nowhere near downtown at the time. They hadn't left their hotel yet for the convention, and the place where the convention was being held was out of the danger zone as well.

I have not being to the Memorial or museum as of yet. I was there the year following the bombing, before the memorial was built. It was odd to see green grass growing on this lot that had been a building the year before. It was fenced off by a chain-link fence and everyone was posting notes and leaving flowers and remembrances. I didn't have anything to leave, so I left my nametag from the FHA (Future Homemakers of America) convention I was attending.

There are many pictures of the devastation of that day, of the building with its front side gaping open, the office furniture visible, the daycare toys scattered on the ground. The one that hits me the hardest now, because back then I wasn't a mother, is the one of the child in the firefighter's arms. A mother's worst fear is harm coming to her child. While that photograph is heartbreaking, it is also uplifting. The care and concern the firefighter showed in handling that child is every mother's dream in the midst of that nightmare. I have no more words, only tears.