Fifteen years ago today I was home sick with the chicken pox. I was 16, a junior in high school, and feeling much better. The previous week had been miserable. I had chicken pox EVERYWHERE. They were in my throat. I think they were in my stomach too. The itching wasn’t even partly soothed by oatmeal and milk baths. I was allowed the scratch my head and I did violently. I hope I never lose my hair because I am certain it is horrible under there.
I was feeling much better though and had been trying to get to the City all morning. My dad was home working on the second floor edition with a family friend. I think he wanted my help, but as a 16 year old I mostly wanted to get out of the house that had been my infirmary for the past week and a half. I still had a few more days before I was allowed back at school and I think this was the first time in my life I missed school.
Every time I went for the door I was called back for something. The last time I tried to leave the phone rang. I answered it and my mother was on the other end asking if I “felt that.” I turned on the TV and was met with a breaking story about an explosion in downtown OKC. The first reports were that it might have been a gas main, and then the live video of a billowing cloud over the Federal Building was put up.
Two days later I was back in school and it was surreal. Everyone was living life as if someone hadn’t blown up a building 30 minutes away. They were talking about the same drama and pretending life looked the same as it did April 18th 1995.
It was years before I went past the site. I’ve never “been” to the memorial. I would drive out of my way to avoid it. I went back to OKC for a friend’s wedding a few years ago and got turned around. There are a lot of one way streets and I missed my turn. I forgot where I was as I went down another street out of habit. You can’t really get lost in OKC. It is a grid so you can always find your way. I felt a bit lost because several things had changed and then I remembered where I was. Maybe I knew where I was on some level the whole time. I drove past the memorial and kept on driving.
Someday I might be able to go back without remembering my visits to the place as a kid, without thinking about the first visions of the explosion, without feeling disgust that people weren’t changed.
I wonder if that day might be the next time I’m able to make it into the city. This is the first time in 15 years I hadn’t been thinking about this date for the month leading up to it. Maybe I’ve been too busy, or maybe I’m finally getting over it.
Where were you on April 19th 1995? Have you been to the memorial? How did it affect you?
Senior Pastors
That crazy cat
Heaps of grumpy old men or something like that
Training to date
I remember exactly where I was. I had come home from work for an early lunch and turned on the TV. I will never forget it. I cried on and off for days and still have the images burned into my memory. I can still hear the voices of the survivors that were interviewed. The voice of one mother who lost all three of her children asking if she was a mother anymore.
This event affected me deeply, and still does.
Hubby and I traveled cross-country for our honeymoon almost ten years ago. I knew we were going to be traveling through Oklahoma. I made sure we made it to the memorial. It was beautiful, and awful. I cried all day.
I won’t ever understand what would bring a person to do such a horrific thing.
I remember that day well. I was in the exercise lab with patients and the TVs are always on. When the news came on, the monitors gradually started alarming and blood pressures went sky-high. It was such a powerful moment to see people literally have a physical reaction to an emotional event. The same thing happened with the WTC attack – teachable moments on what physical manifestations can be caused by stress, which is why many of our patients are there in the first place.
We visited the memorial in 2006 when we went down for an OSU game to see our son, and it was a very emotional day. We found it hard to leave and wandered around for a very long time. I will never forget it.
I was about 40 minutes away in Shawnee, OK. I was in 10th grade in a Christian school. I’m not sure how it all happened but someone got up in our chapel service and began to repent to someone else and God. Suddenly there was a chain reaction and many people were repenting (myself included). The only way I can describe it is a move of God. This went on for several hours and in the midst of it, we heard a sound and there was some glass that rattled. We didn’t know until later that what we heard was from the bombing. It stuck with me since that time because of the genuine repentance and tears (not to mention I had family in the buildings surrounding the federal building). I have been once to the memorial and it’s very sobering…
I was two years freshly married, and trying to make some type of contribution to the world in my workplace. I was trying to get ahead, climb the corporate ladder. Then this happened. This event stunned me. This is stuff that happens over-seas. Not in America, where I was attempting to live the American Dream.
Small TVs were set up around the office and tuned into the local news. Radios were on AM news stations. And we stopped working and watched. Little work was done and lots of worry was set off. And suddenly the American Dream twisted and felt impossible in a place were it could all end so fast. I grew up a little more that day.