April 19, 1995

On April 19, 1995 Timothy McVeigh parked a Ryder truck full of fertilizer explosives in front of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal building in Oklahoma City. At 9:02 a.m. it exploded, ripping through the building killing 168 people, 19 of whom were children all under the age of six. More than 680 people were injured. This was the worst act of terrorism on American soil pre 9/11. **As I'm writing this my husband pointed out, what about Pearl Harbor. Pearl Harbor was an act of war and not an act of terrorism.

I was 17 when this happened and I never would've dreamed that when I went off to boot camp four months later that my first duty station would be Oklahoma City. I arrived in OKC in January of 1996 and had no idea how this city and that horrible act would affect me. To tell the truth I didn't even put two and two together until about two weeks before the one year anniversary, when we were being briefed about all of the security measures that were going to be taken because the President was flying into the base for the ceremony. A lot of the military personnel had been on the base when the bomb exploded. The base is about 15 miles from downtown OKC and the blast was so great that they felt it on base. I will never forget the stories that the guys told me about helping with the rescue and recovery, through their tears. Now folks these aren't wimpy guys, these were big, strong, go to the gym everyday guys and to see them reduced to tears talking about what they experienced was very humbling. I wouldn't get the full effect until I was actually taken to the site a few days after the anniversary.

This is just one block from the Murrah building, and as you can see that after a year, the windows are blasted out and boarded up.

This is the Journal Record building that is across the street from the Murrah building.

This is the Water Resources building directly across the street from the Murrah building and you can see the damage. The survivor tree and YMCA is in the background. About 100 feet from those blockades is the spot that McVeigh parked the Ryder truck. The blast created a big crater in the street so they had to fill it in.


This is from the other side of the street. The survivor tree is in the foregound and the Water Resources building is in the background.


This is where the Murrah building once stood. This is hallowed ground. This fence was always full of momentos that people would leave. Just seeing the fence makes me cry. I spent New Year's Eve '96 at that fence praying over the victims and their families. That's a New Year's I will never forget.


This is on the wall of the Journal Records building in back of the Survivor Tree. The Survivor Tree was in the direct path of the explosion and survived.


This is a hard picture for me to look at especially since I have kids of my own now, but this picture is the most famous from that day. The little girl is Baylee Almon who turned one the day before the blast and she did not survive. This picture also won the 1996 Pulitzer Prize. There is a book out there written by Jon Hansen, who was the Assistant Fire Chief in Oklahoma City when the bombing happened, and it's titled Oklahoma Rescue. It's an amazing book of his first hand account of what happened that day and the days after. It will leave you speechless.

Since I can't get to my pictures yet I have to go with this picture from a postcard that I bought of the OKC National Memorial. The designers did a magnificent job with this memorial. It is so beautiful in person. There are two gates, The Gates of Time, at each end of the street. One gate says 9:01 and the other says 9:03. The street is now a reflecting pool and the chairs are where the Murrah building once stood. Each chair represents a person that was killed, big chairs for the adults and small chairs for the children. Each row represents a floor of the building, so the chairs in that row represent the number of people killed on each floor. There is more to the memorial, but I need to show the pictures to explain it. You can go to www.oklahomacitynationalmemorial.org to see everything in the memorial. It is a beautiful website.

On Friday, President Obama declared April 19, 2010 the National Day of Service and Rememberance for Victims and Survivors of Terrorism. I will leave you with a portion of his speech. "There is no greater evil than willful violence against innocents. On this National Day of Service and Rememberance for Victims and Survivors of Terrorism, we pause to remember victims of terrorism at home and abroad. We honor the heroes who have supported them, and we redouble our efforts to build the kind of world that is worthy of their legacy."