Oklahoma City Tragedy 20th Anniversary/Alfred P Murrah Federal Bdg

[decepticobra]

First off, I realize that I am typing this in January, and its not yet April, but that again is intended as this date nears closer its certainly something that many, like myself, are reflecting upon....the date this happened, and the time that has elapsed to where we stand now in our modern day.

I would like to hear personal stories from each of you, as I feel this is a date that we will never forget where we were when this fateful day happened. I also think that because we are nearing the 20th anniversary of this tragedy, it will undoubtedly receive national news coverage reflecting upon this story (to what extent the news coverage may be is questionable, as some may feel this story is over-exhausted to all applicable extents.

I remember how life was BEFORE this event occurred, life seemed much simpler, quieter, more peaceful. Not this overly sensitive phobia-driven world we live in today. Those days are forever gone and life as we knew it back then may never be the same again.

One thing I vaguely recall, and I cant remember what was said verbatim, is that news reporter Connie Chung came to Oklahoma City and voiced a remark that many locals felt was disparaging. (anyone know what she said?)

I remember going to the memorial site many times (even before the actual National Park that stands there now was built)...seeing the stuffed animals, condolence letters, and ribbons affixed to the chain link fence. I even once worked with a lady who lost her mother in the bombing, this was in the late 90s, her bitterness so fresh. I even remember going to the memorial once the National Park was unveiled, complete with its reflecting pool, the 168 chairs. ....I remember you could even walk up towards each of the chairs and read the names inscribed on each and every chair. The Park Service soon put up the chain securing off that area because maintenance on the lawn became tedious from so many visitors treading upon the grass.

My story: I grew up in Oklahoma City. My family often attended mass services at nearby St. Joseph's Old Cathedral. (walking distance to the Alfred Murrah Building). Before the tragedy happened, I never even knew that the Murrah building was even a Federal Building at all....I always thought it was a community college, because my usual view of the building (from attending church) was from the south, and what I usually saw from the south facade of the building were some stone tables and stone benches, the iron lampposts,...looked like a community college to me.

I was NOT even in Oklahoma at all on April 19th, 1995,..I was some 500 miles to the south, attending tech school at Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio, TX. That morning in class, a sergeant walks into our classroom and asks "Is anyone here from Oklahoma City?" (my hand was the only hand that rose in the air, and I thought I was in trouble for something, I had no clue what he was about to say in the next few seconds of his response)...."A bomb went off at the Federal Building". He just came to deliver that message then promptly left, as like most of the nation, he was just as clueless as everyone else was. The subsequent days passed as I recall looking over newspapers that were delivered to the classroom....there my fellow classmates were reading about a tragedy in "some small town in the heartland",..and I felt like I was reading about a story that happened in my own backyard. ..seeing photos, it struck a heartfelt chord deep in me as my mind filled with curiosity.

[rezman]

I worked in the Murrah building in the early 80's,'replacing pneumatic damper controls for the heat & air systems on every floor. Met some really good people there.

In 1995, I was working over by NE 63rd & Bryant, when our shop was located behind the Braum's plant. There were two huge booms, one right after the other. At the time, one of our guys was outside testing a new large piece of equipment that we had just built. Thinking the machine blew up on him, a coworker yelled "where's Roy"?, and we all ran outside to check on him, and saw he was still running. When I turned around and looked to the southwest, towards downtown, there was a big white mushroom cloud rising up from the downtown area. I first thought natural gas explosion, but as news reposts started to filter in, it was obvious it was something else.

There was a husband and wife, who I knew from my folks church, and the daughter of one of my former bosses, who were in that building, and lost their lives that day.

The comments from Connie Chung were during a live interview with then assitant fire chief John Hansen in which she asked if the fire department in Oklahoma City can handle somehing like this. We had it going on long before she showed up on the scene, and that's what rubbed so many people the wrong way. Here we are, reeling from the biggest local tragedy of our time, and here comes this out of towner questioning our ability to respond, as if we were just podunk Oklahoma.

[turnpup]

I lived in NW OKC at the time and commuted to law school at OU each weekday. On the day of the bombing, I had been sitting in my car studying (or maybe reading or sleeping) in between classes. It was real peaceful and quiet. When I went back into the building to attend my next class, I noticed a hand-written sign on the entry door that said something to the effect of "The police have asked that no one make phone calls into OKC at this time." I was perplexed, but as soon as I opened the door, someone told me what had happened. The whole school was buzzing. A TV had been carted into the main area and everyone was gathered around it, just watching in horror. It seems like classes were cancelled for the remainder of the day.

When I drove back to OKC a little while later, I remember it being gloomy. There was still a thin strip of black smoke hovering over the area.

I did not know anyone who was directly in the bombing. One of my law school friends lived in Mesta Park at the time, and her house sustained quite a bit of damage to windows.

My then-boyfriend and I went downtown and watched the implosion of the building's remains. It was surreal.

The memorial turned out beautiful and tasteful. I wish we could've had the street reopened, but it's understandable that they chose to keep it closed. Some friends of ours from another state were here a few months ago and they were very impressed with the site. They had to leave, but made us promise to take them back to go through the museum next time they come to OKC.

[TAlan CB]

worked at the Myriad Gardens as a horticulturist. I worked inside the Crystal Bridge conservatory and was on the top rolling up the hoses after finishing watering the north end 'dry side. We had just open for the morning and a couple of older ladies were walking across the sky bridge when the explosion made it jump. My first thought was a plane from Tinker flew too close too fast (being an Air-Force ' brat' I had heard that my whole life). My second thought was a tanker had gone off the interstate a couple blocks south - as it was always in repair and 2 stories in the air. I put the rolled hose down and went to the mid-level of the north end where there was a window that faced due north looking down the road on the west side of the Murrah Building. I saw the Mushroom cloud go up in front of me and saw fire trucks parked in the middle of the street facing the 'cloud'. At that point I thought it was a natural gas explosion, the fire trucks did not surprise me because there were stations near by. My younger sister worked as a nurse at what was then Presbyterian Hospital Critical care floor. She was on duty that morning and recounted a similar story when Ms Chung came to her floor in the hospital. As they were very busy, she ordered her crew off the floor because the crew was in the way. Our parents use to live in a neighborhood where the large tornado that hit more (the first one) came into S.E. OKC. At that time the hospital had a similar disaster mode. Sadly, the Murrah building was something they were getting use to, so they were prepared and Chung really rubbed them the wrong way.

[LocoAko]

I don't have much of a story (and certainly not one that would compare to most here) as it was shortly before my 5th birthday and I was across the country at the time and barely remember the event -- I remember McVeigh's execution much more vividly than the bombing itself. I have a bit of a different memory related to the bombing, though. I grew up in Jersey City right across the Hudson River from Lower Manhattan. After the 9/11 attacks when we'd finally returned to school, we received a big box of cards from OKC. I was in 6th grade at the time and the handmade cards were from fellow 6th graders in OKC consoling us and letting us know that they knew what we were going through and that everything would be okay, etc. The class arranged our desks in a big circle and we passed them around one by one, every kid reading each one before we packed it up and sent it along to the next classroom and school. I'm not sure I even knew where Oklahoma was at that point, but their words and drawings really left an impression and actually remain one of my most vivid memories from my entire 9/11 experience. Fifteen years later and living here now, I always wonder where those kids are and if I'm passing them on the street.

[bluedogok]

I worked at Britton & Broadway, it shook our building so much that we thought one of the news helicopters had crashed coming into land at one of the TV stations. Someone was listening to KTOK and told us about the report, you could see the smoke from our building. I drove down the street the night heading home after showing my then girlfriend how to get to the EMSA offices by St. Anthony. She was starting a temp job that morning there. Her brother was an intern at University and her mother was a nurse at Children's, so they ran to the scene. My roommate was a paramedic who got off at 8:00 that morning. After we heard what it was I called him and he stated they had a Code Black on their pagers for everyone to report so he headed back down there. He left EMSA about six months after the bombing. There were a few people I knew of who died in the bombing, no one close to me be still acquaintances.

One of the architects who designed the Murrah building worked for us at the time, he was devastated. Our firm did the CD/CA on the memorial and did the new federal building, I worked on that project for awhile.

[mugofbeer]

I had already moved away from OKC when the bombing occurred but my observations are that the city has grown up a lot since then. At the time, OKC was trying it's hardest to give tax money to corporations to locate factories or maintenance facilities here. Afterwards, the attitude was "screw that, spend the money on ourselves and fix our own city up!" There are still those who want to naysay everything and those who still possess that "We can't do anything right" attitude. There are also those who think OKC should look like New York or Boston.

"Right" is what you make of it. "Right" isn't what other cities do. "RIght" is if YOU like it and it is right for you. The MAPS projects and other city programs were the seeds that is causing an incredible organic redevelopment boom downtown. I don't know of another civic investment that has been more successful anywhere. There will be scattered projects downtown, and as more and more work and live downtown, the infill that some are desperate for to create that urban feeling they crave will come when the demand is there. What this city needs is DIScouragement of outward expansion and focus on encouraging redevelopment, remodeling and renovation of existing properties. It is remarkable what Denver has changed into the last 10 years simply with redevelopment.

[Mel]

I was working the Air Freight dock for SWA. Growing up a Navy brat long time ago my first thought was a sonic boom. The freight dock was/is mostly a long tin shack with insulation so it shook quite hard. One of the memories is going out the front door at the exact same time. Freight agents, postal workers and customs agents all thinking WTH. Like most large explosions there was a mushroom cloud. That was a terrible moment with all kinds of thoughts going through my head. The airport was locked down fairly soon due to thoughts of foreign terrorist. The younger custom agent jumped in their vehicle and tore off downtown. He comes back about 2 hours latter almost solid white with dust except for the tracks of tears streaming down his face. Their main office was there.

Latter I learned that my Wife had done my Mom's hair early that morning and My Dad was yapping about going by the Federal Credit Union. Which consists of a 5 minute process and then him sitting around and drinking coffee and chatting them all up for an hour or two. Fortunately my Mom knows what a "quick deposit" means and asked my Dad to take her home first. It blew up while he was on his way there.

SWA waived the per piece weight limit and supply's started pouring in once the Airport started back up. The Airport Authority lets us use a section of the dock that was unoccupied because our little area overflowed pretty quick. Networks doing remotes carry a whole mess of heavy equipment. I too was a member of the FCU and knew some of the folks that perished. I don't go down there much.

[rezman]

I don't have much of a story (and certainly not one that would compare to most here) as it was shortly before my 5th birthday and I was across the country at the time and barely remember the event -- I remember McVeigh's execution much more vividly than the bombing itself. I have a bit of a different memory related to the bombing, though. I grew up in Jersey City right across the Hudson River from Lower Manhattan. After the 9/11 attacks when we'd finally returned to school, we received a big box of cards from OKC. I was in 6th grade at the time and the handmade cards were from fellow 6th graders in OKC consoling us and letting us know that they knew what we were going through and that everything would be okay, etc. The class arranged our desks in a big circle and we passed them around one by one, every kid reading each one before we packed it up and sent it along to the next classroom and school. I'm not sure I even knew where Oklahoma was at that point, but their words and drawings really left an impression and actually remain one of my most vivid memories from my entire 9/11 experience. Fifteen years later and living here now, I always wonder where those kids are and if I'm passing them on the street.

LocoAko... You may have not known it at the time, but emergency personell from all over your neck of the woods, there in Jersey City, and the rest of the country, came as fast as they could to help, or offer some kind of support. It was truely amazing to see how many people came together as one to help out in any way they could.

[Jim Kyle]

I was part of a small software startup at the time, and was in my office near May Avenue and Grand Blvd (just east of the old Lakeside theater). When I heard and felt the explosion, I picked up the phone and called my wife, who was working near NW 63 and Broadway, to ask if she had any idea what had happened -- of course, she didn't. I then ran outside and saw the cloud some 6 miles SE of my location.

Meanwhile the folks in an architect's office across the hall from my company had turned on a TV and we began getting reports, including the first chopper view of the scene. One of the other fellows in my firm had a scanner in his pickup, just by chance, that he had been taking somewhere. He ran to the truck, got the scanner and a battery, and brought them back upstairs. From that point on we listened to the police bands -- it was absolutely amazing how emergency vehicles from Guthrie, Shawnee, and El Reno organized into columns and came roaring in to assist. The unrehearsed teamwork was something of which all Oklahomans can be proud.

At the time my youngest son was a computer tech for the state DPS and he had been scheduled to do a maintenance job at the Journal Record building at 9 a.m. However he was delayed by an earlier job at University Hospital; that's where he was, in a basement location, when the bomb exploded, and he didn't even hear it! That afternoon, both he and his wife joined the hundreds of volunteer blood donors; my wife and I weren't eligible because of our medications.

The wife of one of our customers was killed; her body was one of the last ones to be found.

The major memory I have from that week, though, is the spontaneous use of headlights during the day, making every rush hour into a funeral procession for the victims. Turning the corner on Lake Hefner Parkway just north of Hefner Road and seeing a mile-long stretch of headlights at 9 a.m. was a quite emotional sight!

[Bellaboo]

I worked at Hertz at the time on NW Expwy and McArthur. I was on the phone with a co-worker that was in the HFC building (10 floor all glass) at NW Expwy and Portland. Simultaneously I heard a sound like someone was dragging a large desk on the floor above where I sat, and heard a lot of people talking on the other end of the phone with my co-worker. She told me her building shook hard, as she was on the 6th floor. This was about 10 and 12 miles from ground zero, but was opposite of the direction of the blast.

[bluedogok]

The blast was to the north, the Murrah building shape acted like a bandshell forcing the concussion wave to the north. The Hertz building at NW Highway & Portland area was far enough out for the wave to spread that far west to Portland. It was felt as far as Guthrie because it was such a large blast. I knew people in CityPlace who heard but didn't feel much because of that band shell effect.

[ljbab728]

I remember how life was BEFORE this event occurred, life seemed much simpler, quieter, more peaceful. Not this overly sensitive phobia-driven world we live in today. Those days are forever gone and life as we knew it back then may never be the same again.

I also remember life BEFORE this event. I was 47 when it happened. I have lived here all of my life. I stunned when it happened and will never forget it. I understand how profoundly it affected multitudes of people but I have never felt a substantial change in the fundamentals of life afterwards as you described. It was horrific but our life before that was hardly idyllic. That is not meant to downplay the events in the least but I remember the turbulent years of the late 60's as being much more of a turning point.

[ctchandler]

Like Bellaboo, I was at the same Hertz location. Some folks felt it but I didn't, or at least it didn't register with me. As for friends/acquaintances at the Murrah building, Coleen Housley was an employee at the credit union and has a chair at the memorial. I met her and we became friends while she was at Woods Credit Union. She ended up marrying the boss and they felt it would be best if she found a job elsewhere so she left Woods and went to work for the Federal Credit Union in the Murrah building. I believe that was about a year before the bombing.
C. T.

[Snowman]

Not much of a story, but another reference of how far the blast shock wave went, I was in a high school science class in Yukon and it shook the windows of the classroom.

[RadicalModerate]

I was teaching Carpentry up in Guthrie. A student and I were outside putting together and fixing up a vendor booth for an upcoming festival prior to hauling it into town. It was a clear, beautiful day when we heard something that sounded like a clap of thunder. It was so strange that the student said he was going back inside. A few minutes later, a couple of my fellow instructors came out and told me what had happened. When I saw the initial news coverage, I had the same sense of disconnected surrealism as I did when I saw the news coverage of the events in Waco.

The people who ran the Day Care Center at the Murrah Building were the same people who ran a Day Care Center out in Choctaw that my daughter attended when she was little. One of her teachers there was among the casualties. I remember her crying about this.

I made some sort of telephone purchase a week or so after the event and when I gave the person on the phone my address he expressed a deep, sincere and empathetic sorrow over what had happened here. I remember thinking that it was as if a heavy, dark cloud had settled over Oklahoma and stayed for a long, long time.

[RadicalModerate]

(duplicate post)

[TheTravellers]

Worked at DISA on Tinker, in the building north of 3001, didn't hear or feel it since I was in the building, went outside after hearing about it, saw the cloud, tried to donate blood, but the lines were hours long at that point, so we decided to do it a day later. Wife was working in the OPUBCO Dark Tower at the time, they felt and heard it. Neither of us knew anyone that got hurt or killed. Went downtown in the days afterward, walking on glass, seeing crumpled doorways and fronts of buildings, horrible. Moved out of OKC to Milwaukee shortly afterwards, saw various stages of the Memorial and Museum on our visits back here, went back to the Museum last year for the first time in probably 10 years, very nice now compared to what it started out as...

[Bellaboo]

The blast was to the north, the Murrah building shape acted like a bandshell forcing the concussion wave to the north. The Hertz building at NW Highway & Portland area was far enough out for the wave to spread that far west to Portland. It was felt as far as Guthrie because it was such a large blast. I knew people in CityPlace who heard but didn't feel much because of that band shell effect.

I knew people at First National that said their building moved about a foot ! The blast was setup by McVeigh and Nickolls to point to the South at the Murrah building, IIRC.
I do know that the ceiling tiles shook loose at my kids elementary school in Yukon, and it was a new school.

[bluedogok]

I knew people at First National that said their building moved about a foot ! The blast was setup by McVeigh and Nickolls to point to the South at the Murrah building, IIRC.
I do know that the ceiling tiles shook loose at my kids elementary school in Yukon, and it was a new school.

The people that I knew were on the south face of Cityplace, being a narrower profile with tighter column spacing it may have absorbed the shock better. I used to work on the 27th floor of Cityplace and it moved a lot less on windy days than FNC or the 40 story building that I worked at (27th floor as well) in Downtown Dallas. They definitely heard it.

The truck was set to blast south but the south wall of the Murrah building was pretty much solid concrete and the north face was curtainwall sitting on a transfer beam. That is why the building acted like a concrete bandshell reflecting the concussion force to the north. I am sure there was some blow by to the south just because of the sheer force of the blast. There was also a secondary concussion wave as the front of the floors on the north side that sat on the transfer beam pancaked and collapsed.

[rezman]

There was also a secondary concussion wave as the front of the floors on the north side that sat on the transfer beam pancaked and collapsed.

I remember being told in the days following that the 2nd boom we felt over at 63rd & Bryant was the floors collapsing. There were definitely two booms and both shook our building.

[bluedogok]

On the third floor at the One Benham Place building I don't remember feeling the second wave like we did the first.

[bucfan1512]

I was a first grade student attending St. James Catholic Grade school and we were in the first hour of school when like so many others we heard a large clap like thunder. This was strange as I remember the day as being very average at best with only a few clouds in the sky. A few moments later the teacher received a phone call and said something very bad had happened. I did not find out what until my parents picked me up later that day. My school had two students in the building at the time and I remember the news stopping by several times to to stories on them. They survived but their lives were changed forever as both received serious injuries to the heads. Finally I lost my Grandmother that day. I did not know her very well since she lived so far away but she was still family...

[Bill Robertson]

I was facilities manager at the Kerr-McGee Technical Center on 150th and Portland at the time. I was checking out items stored in a metal building in back of the main building. When the building shook my first thought was that the dumpster truck driver had ran into the building again. They did often. A few minutes later we got word of the bombing. Since Kerr-McGee Tower had quite a bit of damage we set up the break room, conference rooms and every nook and cranny we could find and get network cables to for use by employees from the Tower. K-M also brought in a team of counselors to help those that had been in the Tower at the time and we made room for them.

My now ex-wife worked for Globe Life. Just a few blocks from the Murrah Building. It took me until late afternoon to get a hold of her and find that she was OK. A couple of her coworkers had children in the daycare in the Murrah Building. That really messed with her. She was never really quite the same after that. There was an area north of the building where crowds were allowed to watch the rescue/recovery/demolition. We went there quite a few evenings to watch. She thought it would help somehow.