This virus can't pass soon enough for me but I'm not sure that the decision by our government officials to start opening up for business is a very smart move right now.
I remember walking through the lunchroom at work and seeing it when the first video reports on TV came in thinking that was one hell of a natural gas explosion. It was later at home before finding out it was a bomb.
Terrible day.
Terrible day.
I was sitting out back at the Western Electric building taking a union break. I worked in maintenance out there til they closed the building. Anyway, heard a hell of an explosion. Now most of ya'll know this building sits at Reno and Council! That's a pretty good distance from the city core. News out there at the plant traveled fast. Wasn't 5 minutes and we had a good idea something terrible had happened downtown. I got ahold of my boss and told him I was leaving to get my kids outta school. Didn't ask him told him and I took off and gathered them up and got home fast as we could. Had to travel across the old crosstown highway close to downtown and I could see that something awful was happening just to the north. Turned on the TV when we got home and could not believe what I was seeing on the news. Terrible terrible day.
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Some thoughts this morning... At 9:01 that morning, everyone was going about their day as usual, all the folks in that building, all the first responders that shortly would be called into service in way they never expected, and all of us who were doing our normal things away from that scene. Then life changed! All of us have been affected in some way by that morning.
Just a few weeks ago, all of our lives have again been affected by a single event. Many things will never again be the way it was. We need to show the same level of concern, action, appreciation of life that was shown at 9:03 that morning, and move ahead to help make April 20, 2020, and the days that follow better than the day that preceded this new event in our lives.
Just a few weeks ago, all of our lives have again been affected by a single event. Many things will never again be the way it was. We need to show the same level of concern, action, appreciation of life that was shown at 9:03 that morning, and move ahead to help make April 20, 2020, and the days that follow better than the day that preceded this new event in our lives.
I was working for Oklahoma Natural Gas at the time, and first heard on the radio of an explosion. My first thought was whatever has happened, we're about to get sued. Then they said 1/3 of the Murrah building was GONE, and my second thought was, that's not natural gas.
I was 9 years old when it happened, was in class, lived in Fort Collins Colorado. I had just given a report earlier in the week about the places our grandparents live, mines was about my grandmother that lived in OKC (but was actually Moore). The front office lady came in and told the teacher that my parents were there to pick me up. The teacher looked at me, gave me a hug, and said "I'll be praying for you." I thought is was in some serious trouble to be taken out of class by my parents. When we got to the car, my dad said that somebody crashed a truck into a building in OKC, a building that grandma visits 2-3 times a week, and that we can't get ahold of her, so we're headed down to see her. I remember being really mad, 9 year old boy mad, somebody tried to hurt my grandmother. When we got home, my mother pulled into the driveway with my sister, who was in middle school. We quickly packed and threw everything in the van. I couldn't grasp why everything was so quick and urgent. We got a hold of my grandmother, but were already half way here. As we pulled into OKC, I could see all the lights and helicopters buzzing around. The next day, the family went down to the area, we didn't interfere, but watched from a long ways away. I remember seeing the ambulances racing by. I told my dad that one day, I would work on that ambulance. This year is my 7th with EMSA. That day changed me into understanding my duty, my purpose. Ill never forget seeing the crews those next couple days, absolute heros in a 9 year old's eyes. Today, I still see them as heros and i'm proud to work with them.
I was 8th grade science class. The teacher tuned in one of the OKC news channels on the TV that was normally used to play some kind of educational media. It was really sad to watch. Some our city fire fighters left ASAP after the call for help. They rotated fresh guys in for a couple or few days.
I was in my office in Norman when it happened. It wasn’t until some time afterward that I called our sales rep at a place in OKC that I found out what had happened. When he answered, the first question he asked was how I got through; my thought was, well, I just picked up the phone and dialed, then he said there’d been some kind of explosion downtown, and the phone system was a mess. And that was how I found out about it.
My mechanic, one of my dad’s former subordinates, had his shop on the corner of 6th and Hudson (the old Firestone). The axle from the truck landed on a car in his back lot, and the perimeter that night was in front of his store—I remember seeing it on the news, with yellow caution tape, a Humvee, and a National Guardsman with a rifle out front.
My boss’s boss was supposed to have been in a meeting in the Journal Record building at 9am, and would’ve been in the conference room that was right across the street from the truck when it blew up, but something else kept him from making it. (I don’t remember if he was in the building or not, but I’m certainly glad that he wasn’t in that conference room.) Somebody else I knew had a brother in the Journal Record building when it happened, and he got sprayed with shattered glass. As I recall, while he was in surgery, his wife was in a different hospital in labor. As it turned out, she was somehow related to a coworker of mine. Talk about a small world...
Just a few years earlier, my dad would’ve very likely been walking down that street around 9am on his way to the second stop on his daily circuit...
My mechanic, one of my dad’s former subordinates, had his shop on the corner of 6th and Hudson (the old Firestone). The axle from the truck landed on a car in his back lot, and the perimeter that night was in front of his store—I remember seeing it on the news, with yellow caution tape, a Humvee, and a National Guardsman with a rifle out front.
My boss’s boss was supposed to have been in a meeting in the Journal Record building at 9am, and would’ve been in the conference room that was right across the street from the truck when it blew up, but something else kept him from making it. (I don’t remember if he was in the building or not, but I’m certainly glad that he wasn’t in that conference room.) Somebody else I knew had a brother in the Journal Record building when it happened, and he got sprayed with shattered glass. As I recall, while he was in surgery, his wife was in a different hospital in labor. As it turned out, she was somehow related to a coworker of mine. Talk about a small world...
Just a few years earlier, my dad would’ve very likely been walking down that street around 9am on his way to the second stop on his daily circuit...
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