We all have our moments that we will never forget. For my parents and grandparents generation it is when JFK was shot. For our generation, it’s 9/11. But there is another huge moment that sticks in my mind, that I remember exactly where I was when I heard about it: the Oklahoma City Bombing.
Today is the 20th anniversary of the bombing. 20 years ago, I was 11. I was in 5th grade and spent this week at an archaeology camp down near the four corners. We were isolated from the world, only allowed one 2 minute phone call home all week.We stayed four kids to a cabin with a parent chaperone in some of the cabins (my cabin did not have one). We were the “select” group of kids, only 20 or 30 of us chosen to attend.
We spent the week digging in the dirt, visiting abandoned Native American villages and learning about nature, history and what an archaeologist does. It was a busy and exhausting but fun and exciting week.
The bombing happened on Wednesday, but we didn’t find out until Friday. On the drive back to Denver, we stopped at a convenience store for gas, water, snacks, etc. One of our neighbors (who was a parent chaperone on the trip) bought a newspaper when we stopped and the mood instantly changed.
What was a bunch of pre-teens having fun, laughing, being silly suddenly turned into somber silence and confusion. The adults were clearly shaken and didn’t want to talk too much about it with the kids. All we knew was someone blew up a builidng in Oklahoma City.
It wasn’t until I arrived home and watched the evening news that the reality of the situation came to light. I remember the pictures, hearing about all the children and even at my young age knew the severity of the situation.
Whereas most children outside of Oklahoma moved on quickly, I wasn’t allowed to because Tim McVeigh continued to show up on my TV screen as his trial was moved to Colorado and the coverage continued. At 11 years old I never would have guessed how important Oklahoma would become to my life.
During our two years living in Oklahoma City, we visited the memorial more than once. It is one of the quietest, most solemn places I’ve ever been. You feel weird talking above the tiniest whisper and the design of the memorial could not be more perfect. Rows and Rows of chairs lined up to represent every life lost, tiny chairs intermingled with the bigger ones to signify the youngest lives lost. Even now thinking about it brings tears to my eyes.
While living in Oklahoma City, I worked in child care and it makes the significance of that day more real. I talked to my co-workers about that day. I have family that lived not too far away. I heard stories of the sound, the vibrations, the chaos, the sadness.
I told the girls about it at breakfast this morning and told them how important it is to remember things like that and Honeybun innocently asked “why would we want to remember that?” and I told her “because if we forget, it might happen again. If people forget how sad and terrible it was, someone might think it’s a good idea to try it again. People may stop paying attention and being careful. Because those lives mattered and we never, ever want that to happen again.”
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Photo By Serge Melki from Indianapolis, USA [CC BY 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons
