This weekend, I stepped into a chapter of my past I hadn’t revisited in decades. My family and I made the drive to downtown Oklahoma City, drawn to the National Memorial & Museum. It was a place I’d long meant to see but always deferred, as if time could soften its edges. What we encountered was profoundly moving—horrifyingly captivating, in a way that clings to you like dust from the rubble.
I remember the bombing with a clarity that surprises me still. It was April 19, 1995, and I was a junior in high school, living in southeast Oklahoma, a couple hundred miles from the blast. I was in geography class when the first whispers broke through—rumors of an explosion in the heart of the city. We huddled around the TV, watching grainy footage of smoke and chaos unfolding in real time. In the weeks and months that followed, the stories poured in: the lives shattered inside the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building, the survivors pulled from the debris, the nationwide vigil for justice as we waited for Timothy McVeigh and his accomplices to be caught. I knew something monstrous had happened, but from that safe distance, its full weight eluded me. The devastation felt abstract, a tragedy on screens, not the raw unraveling of souls.
Fast forward to the spring of 1997. I was a college student, playing at being a journalist for the campus newspaper—though, let’s be honest, I was no seasoned reporter; I was just a kid fumbling with a notepad and too much bravado. My assignment: cover a speaker at the Baptist Student Union, a rescue worker who would be visiting and sharing his story. I didn’t take it seriously. At 18, priorities skewed toward the fleeting—dates, distractions, anything but the gravity of the moment. So I showed up with a companion in tow, and left before the talk really got started.
The next day, I sauntered into my faculty advisor’s office with the gall to shrug it off. “I went, I listened,” I said, “but there wasn’t much of a story there.” Her face—oh, I can still see it now, etched with a fury born of disbelief. “Are you out of your mind?” she snapped. “Of course there’s a story. He was a rescue worker at the Oklahoma City bombing.” Those three words landed like aftershocks. I hadn’t paid attention. I didn’t realize who the speaker was or what he’d really done. She gave me a chance to redeem myself, and I took it. I tracked down the rescue worker’s number, called him, and asked him to share his story.
What he recounted stripped away every layer of detachment. Like every other Oklahoman, he’d been gutted by the news, compelled to rush to the site and help. But nothing prepared him for the horror up close: sifting through twisted metal and concrete, pulling out bodies and fragments of bodies, the air thick with the acrid scent of destruction. He told me of the common mission and camaraderie. He described how utterly devastated the rescue team was when they learned it was an American, who had perpetrated the evil. He was a youth pastor, a man of faith and purpose, yet the trauma burrowed deep. It unraveled his life—depression set in, his work at the church became impossible, and in his darkest hour, he attempted to end it all. That was the story I’d missed the first time: not just the event, but its human toll—visceral, unrelenting, achingly real.
Walking through the museum with my family three decades later, those echoes came alive. April 19, 1995, dawned beautifully, as most Oklahoma springs do—clear skies, a gentle warmth that belied the violence to come. The exhibits pull you in gently at first: a video from Oklahoman Kristin Chenoweth played as we walked in. we saw a familiar face who later reflected, “It was a day like any other… until it wasn’t.” Walking through the exhibit looking at newspaper clippings that transport you to that instant, headlines screaming the unthinkable. But the real gut punch waits in a recreated room from across the street, mimicking the modest setup of the Oklahoma Water Resources Board meeting underway that morning. They were discussing something mundane—plans for bottled water, I think—when the tape crackles to life.
Two minutes in, the world fractures. A deafening roar erupts from the speakers, followed by screams—raw, instinctive terror as confusion reigns. No one knew what had hit them; the blast wave shattered windows blocks away. Listening to that recording, watching the archival footage loop, I finally saw it: the disbelief in my advisor’s eyes, the rescue worker’s haunted recounting. It all sharpened into crystalline focus. I’m not saying it took 30 years to truly understand—life’s too layered for such tidy epiphanies—but staring at the artifacts in front of your face, tracing the timeline with your fingertips, makes the abstract inescapably tangible.
I could linger on the artifacts, the timelines, the quiet field of 168 empty chairs outside, each a silent sentinel for a life lost. But one thread wove through it all, repeated in the museum’s narratives and the national news reels they replayed—not just local coverage, but a global spotlight that swelled when the truth emerged: this was domestic terrorism, an attack from within our own borders. What crystallized for me was the unity that followed. It wasn’t “out there” in some distant land; it was here, among us. In the aftermath, our divides dissolved. Political rifts, petty hatreds, prejudices—they all fell silent. We were simply Oklahomans, bound by a shared wound, showing up to help, to heal, to hold one another. Volunteers poured in from every corner, strangers became family in the rubble. It was our God-given humanity laid bare, resilient and tender.
As Abraham Lincoln once reflected in the shadow of another national scar, the Civil War: “With malice toward none, with charity for all… let us strive on to finish the work we are in.” Or consider Maya Angelou’s poignant reminder after her own brushes with violence: “You may encounter many defeats, but you must not be defeated. In fact, it may be necessary to encounter the defeats, so you can know who you are, what you can rise from, how you can still come out of it.” These words echo the memorial’s quiet power—a call to rise not just from rubble, but from the everyday fractures we inflict on one another.
And yet, here’s the ache that lingers: Why does it take such tragedy to summon our truest, greatest selves? Why do we wait until forced—by blasts or bereavements—to love without reservation? There should be a better way. And there is. It’s in the small acts we can choose every day: a hand extended without prompt, a bridge built over the chasms we too often widen. The memorial doesn’t just mourn; it whispers that possibility. If we listen, perhaps we won’t need another April 19 to remember who we can be.
As we left, the sun shining brightly on those gleaming chairs, I felt a quiet resolve. Not to forget the horror, but to honor the light it revealed—and to carry it forward.
David Willis 