April 19, 1995

I was working in the Oklahoma County Assessor’s office as a residential field appraiser. Valuation protests in progress, with some of us each day acting as hearing officers and some of us going out to check on disputed physical characteristics of properties. That day I was setting up appointments and getting ready to go out to check on some properties when there was a loud boom and the building shook.

My first thought was that something had blown up at Tinker Air Force Base, and I looked out the south facing windows there on the fourth floor of the Oklahoma County Annex Building. I then realized that an explosion that big might be a nuke and looking out the windows was not a good idea. Jeff Pennington, my supervisor, came out of his office and yelled for everyone to evacuate the building. All of us in the office—about 20—headed out, and to the stairs, and down. The rest of the building was evacuating, also, through the corridors full of dust drifting down from the ceilings.

We ended up in a parking lot across the street to the west. There we stood around waiting, speculating as to what had happened. Car exploded in the basement garage? (The District Attorney’s office was on the sixth floor and sometimes he got death threats.) No, it was quickly obvious that it was not in our building but somewhere to the north. Gas line explosion? No, gas explosions were softer, not so flat and hard. I don’t remember what else, or exactly how long we were out there, but eventually we were all sent home; the building needed to be checked for structural damage.

It was not until Monday that we were back to work. Besides checking for structural damage, downtown was mostly shut down to keep the streets, cell towers, and phone exchanges clear for rescue efforts. I sat at home the next several days. I had been sick and was still on an anti-biotic, so I was not in a hurry to go anywhere or do anything. I was also glued to the TV praying, along with everyone else that more survivors would be found. Along with the rest of the world, I heard about McVey’s being stopped and arrested.

I don’t when it was that the names of the lost started appearing. One of the four dead across the street from the Murrah Building, in the building containing the Water Resources Board, was someone that I had known from Riverside Church’s College & Career group several years past. She left a son to be raised by her parents. A secret service agent who was killed had sat across from me at my desk two weeks before protesting his property valuation. (I think that I had shown him how his house valuation was in line with sales in the neighborhood.) A friend from church had just entered the building before the bomb exploded. He was waiting for the elevator, and sheltered by the blast by the elevators. Telling about it later he said that it blew him down the corridor but, by the grace of God, he only had a few scratches. Others I knew worked on the rescue effort, and it was something that left its mark on them from then on…as it has on so many others.

I had been in the Murrah Bldg. only once: when I spent a day at MEPS (the Military Entrance Processing Station) being tested, poked, and prodded…when I wasn’t waiting, of course.