Tomorrow is the 12th anniversary of the Oklahoma City Bombing, the worst act of terrorism on U.S. soil until, 9–11.  I can hardly recall the events without crying.  The day it happened, I had a dentist’s appointment.  I was apparently in my car, on my way back home, when the actual attack occurred.  When I reached home, my wife Anne greeted me at the front door.

“Something terrible has happened,” she said.

“What?”

“I don’t know,” she said, beginning to cry.

Anne was the picture of stoicism.  She never cried.  I quizzed her.  “What happened?”

“I don’t know.  Something terrible.”

I turned on the TV to see the local Channel 9 helicopter reporting from near downtown Oklahoma City.  There was smoke coming from one of the buildings.  When the chopper flew to the other side of the building, my heart almost stopped beating.  The chopper pilot exclaimed, “Oh my God!”

The entire front of the building was gone, blown literally away.

“Oh my God!” I said as Anne and I both began to weep.

That was just the beginning.  Video of bloodied citizens began appearing on the screen as the scene began to unravel.  The entire downtown of Oklahoma City became an instant disaster scene.

Later that day, a friend picked me up in his car and drove us downtown.  Friends, I am a Vietnam vet and you can believe me when I tell you that I’ve seen it all.  Well, I thought I had.  I can only tell you that the devastation I saw reminded me of the worst bombed-out Vietnamese cities I had ever seen.

There were blocks and blocks of cranes on the street, the first inkling of the outpouring of solidarity among the locals, and soon the entire nation that had just begun.  It was my first experience with literally hundreds of newspeople, swarming the area like flies.

The days following the attack remain in my memory like fast-set concrete.  I will never forget the images of firemen, search dogs, a doctor amputating a woman’s leg, trapped beneath tons of concrete, with a pocket knife.  The babies in the Murrah Building day care center that didn’t survive.

There isn’t enough time, or room on this blog to describe the horror that occurred in Oklahoma City 12 years ago tomorrow.  Some of you know the horror – the 9–11 victims; hell, the Virginia Tech victims!

The City suffered an immense setback on April 19, 1995.  Education suffered, our economy suffered, out psyches suffered.

Anne, my wife, contracted cancer in 1997 and died in 1998.  Distraught, I drove downtown at midnight during the anniversary of 1998 and sprinkled some of her ashes on the killing field where the Murrah Building had once stood.

I can’t write anymore because I can no longer see the computer screen through my tears.