The Oklahoma City Bombing – 20 Years Later

20 years ago this morning I stood behind the front desk at the Waterford Hotel in Oklahoma City checking out guests and eagerly planning my wedding to the most amazing guy. I was giddy with the flush of  new love and youthful innocence. I was wiggling my sparkling left hand in front of my grinning co-worker when the entire building shuddered with the aftershocks of an explosion.

Every door in the entire hotel flew open and then slammed shut as the shock wave hit us. We were five miles from the epicenter, and the impact was so great we thought that a semi truck had slammed into the building. Our office manager vaulted over our desk and ran outside. Within minutes he was stammering about the plume of smoke which was clearly visible from downtown Oklahoma City. “I think a plane crashed.” He croaked.” “There’s no way that anyone survived. God bless them and their families.” My co-worker and I leaned against each other and grew misty-eyed the way that 20-year-old girls will. We held each other lightly as the manager turned on the radio to news that it wasn’t a plane crash, but a truck bomb.

As the initial reports came in, the radio began talking about the devastation of a bomb at the Journal Record Building, and the loss of life. My knees gave way and I collapsed to the floor already in shock. The Journal Record Building was where my fiance worked.

The other front desk girl whispered to someone nearby, “Are you a widow if your fiance dies?”

“No,” I heard him answer through the fogged panic in my brain. “No, you’re just damned unlucky.”

One of the bellhops pulled me to my feet and quickly escorted me away from the sudden chaos at the front desk. I was taken to the gym downstairs where the news was already showing the devastation that morning had wrought, not on the Journal Record Building, but on the Murrah Federal Building across the street. I huddled in complete silence with the other employees who were awaiting news. There were six of us. In the hours that were to come, we sat in shocked silence with our eyes glued to the television screen. We never spoke to each other. We were too horrified for words.

Throughout the day, my future in-laws called me for updates. No one had heard from him, and we knew there had been casualties in the surrounding buildings as well. Shots of my love’s office building showed broken glass, destruction, and the walking wounded. It was 10:00 in the morning.

It was 2:30 in the afternoon, five and a half hours after the blast, that his aunt called to tell me his car was in the driveway. She’d rung the bell and he hadn’t answered, but the car was there and he had been presumably well enough to drive home. I ran out of the hotel without a word to anyone and flew to his house. I fished the “emergencies only” key from my purse and opened the door with trembling hands. The house was wrapped in shadows and silence. Not a light was turned on, and all the blinds had been closed.

He stood in the long hallway with a swaying stillness. Twenty years later and I can still see him there, covered in dirt, dust, and fiberglass insulation; his normally perfect hair was tousled, and there was a streak of what looked like blood on his left cheek.

“How long have you been standing here?” I asked him. “Why are you standing in the hallway?”

I’ll never forget the vacant look of shock on his face as he turned his hollow gaze to me and whispered, “There are no windows in the hallway.”

It would be years before he stopped avoiding being near windows. The horrors of flying glass had imprinted themselves in his mind. I forced him to shower and then into bed, and he still stared at me with those shell shocked eyes.

“Tell me,” I urged him. “Tell me all of it.” And he did. He vomited up descriptions and agonizing details and when he was finished, he slept. It was 4:00 in the afternoon.

It is twenty years later, and I still vividly recall every word that he entrusted to my care. He will not discuss these things now, except rarely with me.  There are details which I know he has forgotten.  I remember them all, just as he told me.  I am his memory, his witness. We have not been to the memorial museum. He hasn’t wanted to see it, and I don’t need to.  I would never go without him, and he won’t go. His name is on the survivor wall at the memorial downtown. We’ve never seen it. People make rubbings of it and give them to us. I never know what to do with them, so I just put them away in a drawer and wait for the day when he wants to see them.

Twenty years ago today I almost lost him.  A mad man with a truck and a bomb shattered the peace of our city. Some people would be bitter, but the people of Oklahoma City are not. We have learned that tragedies can happen anywhere, that our loved ones can be gone in an instant, that tragedy is not a respecter of age or social standing. Today, we will hold our loved ones a little tighter, make sure we tell them we love them, and thank God for the gift of one more day with them.

Photo credit – the Murrah Building By NASA employee (This image, shown on this webpage)[see page for license], via Wikimedia Commons