April 19, 1995

As we approach the 15th anniversary of the bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building we are all forced unwittingly to remember that terrible day in Oklahoma City history. In fact, using the word anniversary seems inappropriate but I don’t know what other word to use so I will use it with a lower case “a”

I worked for the same Engineering and Surveying firm that I do now. We had our offices on 50th and Pennsylvania near 50 Penn Place, about 4 miles away. That morning at 9:02 I was on the phone with a client and our building shook and the all-glass building rattled like someone had run into it. We all heard it and felt it but didn’t know what it was until a few minutes later in the break room.

I can recall the first image I saw was brought to me from KWTV’s Kelly Ogle, who is also a lifelong Oklahoman. Kelly was in the Channel 9 chopper and flew over the smoke filled rubble and said “it looks like half the building was gone”. It was. Kelly first though it may have been a gas line or some other kind of accident. It wasn’t.

The next few hours were filled with misinformation and speculation as the facts came in sporadically, at best. Some reports of another bomb. Other reports of two or three people they were looking for. None of us knew what was going on but we knew it was bad. Some of us went home for the day. I didn’t have a cell phone back then and my wife bought me one that week.

One night my wife and I took some supplies to the rescue workers and as I drove down 8th Street you could see the remains of the building three blocks south and my gut just wrenched. That is a feeling that I hadn’t felt before or since that time. It was overwhelming, I just wanted to leave. I suppose it was like seeing a dead body, only multiplied by 168.

Three of our friends were killed that day, Luther and LaRue Treanor and their granddaughter, Ashley Eckles, 4.

We have all moved on with our lives but still never forget that moment when we found out what happened on that street in Oklahoma City 15 years ago