Originally posted 04-19-2010. Reposted 04-19-2011.
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I’ll never be able to forget April 19, 1995 for as long as I live. I was a youth pastor in Oklahoma City at my first full-time church when I felt our entire building shake. We were hoping to start some renovation on our upstairs facilities soon, so I just thought someone had begun work already and dropped something really heavy. A few moments later phone calls started pouring in telling that a building had exploded downtown.
Everyone in our church office was immediately glued to the television watching footage that we could not believe. Chaos reigned that day and soon people on the radio and TV were calling for clergy members to head downtown and help. My Senior Pastor was ready to go and he said he wanted me to go with him.
We drove all over the place downtown, all the way to the Murrah building that had been blown to pieces. There were FBI jackets everywhere. We asked anyone and everyone where we should go. At one point we ended up at a temporary triage center established in a parking garage. It felt too awkward to pray for those who were in need of immediate medical care so we asked if there were somewhere else we could help. Finally someone said go to St. Anthony’s Hospital and care for the family members of the incoming victims.
At the Hospital we were escorted downstairs to a large windowless basement room. It was full of crying and worried-looking people. I was given a clergy badge and asked to mill around asking people how I could pray for them. It felt strange to say the least, but I got to work meeting people and praying for them.
I met a young couple who was worried about their 14 month old baby girl who was in the building’s daycare. They said her name was Jaci. I met a family of several blonde girls, a lovely blonde mother and her parents. They were worried about the lady’s husband and the girls’ dad, Paul Ice. I remember meeting the mother of baby Antonio. Her friend was with her holding her own baby while Antonio’s mother was weeping. The friend said to me, “My baby would have been in that daycare too except I was running late for work.” Then Antonio’s mom asked me, “Why did God let my baby get hurt in that building when I was responsible enough to be on time for work?”
I met many others that day, but these three stand out in my memory because all three of them showed up in the obituaries over the next few days. It was a frightening and formative day for me. I learned more about pastoral care and compassion in that one day than in the rest of my 20 years of ministry combined.
Next week I’m doing the 1/2 Marathon in Oklahoma City in honor of my son Taylor, who has Autism, and in memory of the following three victims of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building bombing in downtown Oklahoma City on April 19, 1995:
- Jaci Rae Coyne, 14 months, Moore
- Paul Douglas Ice, 42, Midwest City, senior special agent, Customs Service
- Antonio Ansara Cooper, 6 months
I too was in OKC on April 15, 1995, but my story is quite different. I didn’t help anyone that day. I didn’t counsel anyone. My story speaks to the power of the bomb that went off at 9:02 am. I share this so those who weren’t in OKC have a variety of perspectives. I would like to hear others perspectives on that dreaded day as well.
I was student teaching at Putnam City HS as a geometry teacher. 1st hour was dismissed at 9:00 with 2nd hour to start at 9:05. Think back to what your HS hallways sounded like between classes. Pretty loud with everyone’s attention going in a thousand different directions. I was standing in the doorway of my upstairs classroom watching the kids scramble from one class to another when it happened. The building shook so severely that then entire student body stopped in their tracks as the decibel level dropped to zero in an instant.
My first thought was that a large truck had run into the front of the building. I went to the window to see the truck embedded in the building with brick debris all around hoping there was no one in the classroom where the truck had penetrated. To my surprise there was no truck. No debris. Just a beautiful sunny morning on the front lawn with everything in place. At that point I knew something very much out of the ordinary had happened somewhere.
As 2nd hour began, every student had their own theory as to what shook the building. After getting everyone settled down, I continued with the lesson of the day. By 9:30 there was an unusual number of students moving through the hallways, but even more unusual was their silence. They weren’t talking to each other and some were audibly crying. The counselors were pulling kids out of class whose parents worked downtown.
By the beginning of 3rd hour the truth was out. Everyone knew there was a horrible explosion in downtown Oklahoma City. Most figured a gas explosion. No one expected an act of terrorism.
After staying awake most of the night trying to get every detail possible from every media outlet I could, I knew teaching on April 20 would not be easy. I gave in to reality before I every arrived at school that morning abandonded my lesson plan for the day. We would simply discuss the unavoidable. As the 1st hour discussion progressed, the question of the bomb’s power to shake a building so far away was revealed. Being a math geek, even in horrible circumstances, I saw an opportunity to review the pythagorean theorem. I found a map of OKC and we calculated the distance from the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building to Putnam City HS to be 9 miles.
15 years later, it still baffles me. A bomb so powerful that it silenced the roar of an entire high school student body in an instant from 9 miles away.
My husband, Anthony, and I married in Los Angeles on April 28, 1995. In my haste to complete our wedding plans prior to moving to Detroit, for my husband’s job in July, I was not so aware of this act of American terrorism. I was in Tokyo, Japan when 9/11 occurred. As they say, hindsight is 20/20. My prayer is that the nation and the world be made aware of the cultural forces at work here and abroad.
I just read in Zig Ziglar’s HOW TO RAISE POSITIVE KIDS IN A NEGATIVE WORLD Parent Book Club that, “there are so many adults who have been closet-victims, afraid to identify themselves, hurting but unable to get help, or not knowing that help is available.”
As a Church, we need to become better at marketing the help that exists from a proactive rather than reactive position.
Wow, what a powerful post. I remember watching the news reports about that day and feeling my heart break over the loss. My heart still breaks all these years later. Thanks for sharing your perspective.
Thanks for the comments everyone.
I remember that day so well. Our 23 year old son, Alan Danielson, was youth pastor at Cherokee Hills Baptist Church. He had been married only a few months. We heard the news on T.V! Our hearts were broken for the people of Oklahoma City and our nation. We were 550 miles away from our young son. News was slow incoming that he and Stace were OK. We were thankful that Alan was able to minister to some of the heart broken families.