I was there…but I wasn’t there. How do I explain April 19, 1995 at 9:01
a.m.?
By 9:00 a.m. the morning was already an hour into “work”—I was
at my desk sorting through my “in” basket, determining what do tackle first,
what was a priority and what could wait. I looked out my window at the Myriad
Gardens—on a clear day I could make out a slight rise in the horizon that was
Newcastle (the town where we lived). I could hear the attorney whose office was
next to mine on the phone. The main
attorney I worked for was on the other side of the building talking with
another partner. You could hear the
sound of secretaries, legal assistants, and attorneys getting the day started—phone
calls, dictating and transcribing dictation, discussions, copiers busy …
general life in a law firm.
And then the floor seemed to roll.
And the ceiling seemed to bend down.
There was a rumble.
Then a sound I can’t forget.
And then the screams—“What was that?” “Oh my God! Oh my God!” “It’s the Federal
Building.” “Oh my God!”
I thought the ceiling over my desk was collapsing and I ran
into the hall. I remember thinking it felt like an
earthquake but what was that explosion?
Had a plane hit our building?
Within moments (seconds) the entire firm was standing
looking out the north facing windows of our building—looking from the 31st
floor down at the Murrah Federal Building.
There were papers—the sky was filled with the papers that make up all
the bureaucracy of our lives—filling the sky with the debris of the
building. And we stood there in
shock. What was this? What were we seeing?
I ran back to my desk.
I remember thinking I wanted my family.
I called the Newcastle Elementary School and told the secretary, “There’s
been an explosion in downtown Oklahoma City.
I don’t know what it is—but will you let Danny & Mika know I’m
ok? And the other kids whose parents are
downtown . . .”
I couldn’t get through to my husband in Norman. The lines were already jammed. Amazingly, my Mom in California had just
walked into her living room and as she clicked on her t.v., she saw the report
of an explosion in downtown Oklahoma City.
She immediately called me—I said I was ok and lost connection.
We made a quick assessment and determined everyone in our
firm was accounted for. One of our “runners”
had a mother that had been called in that morning for a meeting at the Federal
Building. A couple of people went with
her to look for her mom. They returned
a short time later. I remember her saying:
“There’s
a lot of people hurt. But I think they
are going to be ok.”
And the look on the two people who
had gone with her as they stood behind her and shook their heads, saying “no.” No, it wasn’t going to be ok.
My van was parked close, so I volunteered to take her to St.
Anthony’s hospital to look for her mom.
Just getting out of the parking garage onto the street was a
nightmare. I remember all of the
emergency vehicles going past us. One
time I literally stopped in the middle of the street because there was no way
to pull to the curb as ambulances and fire trucks passed us.
Once at the hospital, we discovered people everywhere. The doctors and nurses and hospital
personnel were lined up waiting for the incoming ambulances. Her mom wasn’t on the list of patients
brought in. We started looking around
and finally found her mom, in shock, wandering on the sidewalk outside the
hospital.
As we tried to return to our building, a policeman said I
couldn’t turn into the parking garage. I
thought he meant from the direction I was heading, so I went around the block
and tried to come in from the other direction.
This time he stuck his head into my window and said, “LADY! You are NOT going in there. Go home.”
I tried to tell him I had to get back to work and he said “You are
getting close to being arrested. Go
home.”
I let our runner and her mom out
of the van and drove to the south side of the Myriad Gardens and parked my
van. I started walking across the
gardens—trying to get back to work. I
came to a pay phone (pre-cell phone days) and tried to call the office, but the
call wouldn’t go through. So I tried my
husband again—and this time reached him.
“WHERE ARE YOU?” he yelled into the phone. I told him I was in the Myriad Gardens trying
to get back to work but I couldn’t seem to get there—would he call our office
manager for me and explain? At that, my
husband said, “You aren’t going back to work.
They think it was a bomb and they think there may be more. GET OUT OF DOWNTOWN.”
As I started, dazed, walking back to my car, a woman that I
didn’t personally know but had seen in our building, asked me if I had my car
out of the garage. They had closed the
parking garage & she couldn’t get her car.
She wanted to know if I could take her home. By the time we reached my van, it was full of
familiar faced strangers. As we drove
out of downtown Oklahoma City, we passed so many familiar faces. Those people you see on the elevator, in the
coffee shop—those people you don’t know but you see every day. As we passed them, we were all saying things
like, “Oh, there’s the guy with the beard—he’s ok;” “Look, the pregnant lady that works next
door is ok;” “There’s that man that
always reads his paper on the corner…” We were searching for “OK.”
It took quite a while to deliver all of my passengers to
their homes and to make my way back to Newcastle. To start hearing who wasn’t ok. To start getting the phone calls. I don’t think anyone was untouched. The members
of the law firm called to see if each of us was ok. I thought I was.
I pride myself with being tough and able to handle
things. But the next morning driving to
work I started to shake and then the tears.
I had to pull the car over. The
closer I got to downtown, the more I panicked.
I finally turned my car around and went home. Most of our staff did make it in to work that
day. And the next day. And the next.
Step by step we kept going. And
trying to help where we could.
We lost so many beautiful lives that day and so many others’
lives have been changed. And my life was
changed because I was there, but I wasn’t there. Three blocks away, thirty-one stories
up. But I can still hear the sound …
