Communication Studies Department
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by Michael Palmer
Dubbed the 'Survivor Tree,' still standing ten years later across from where the bombing took place.
by Michael Palmer
Guest Writer
It has now been 15 years since the bombing in Oklahoma City; the earth has made 15 full revolutions around the sun. Time does march on, but this kind of anniversary naturally creates a flood of recollections.
As an adopted son of the heartland and as a member of a family that lost two of its members, Dr. Charles and Jean Hurlburt, what happened that day was insulting. But what happened in its wake in the handling of the dead, the injured and the mourners, by Oklahomans and others, was admirable.
In one of the worst acts of terrorism ever on U.S. soil, 168 people wrongly and prematurely lost their lives. The 4,800-pound explosive rocked both Oklahoma City and the nation on April 19, 1995, causing monumental damage—which was miniscule in comparison to the human destruction.
The savage blast dispensed its fury indiscriminately, sending invisible concussion waves that blew out windows, crushed surrounding cars and broke countless hearts. The sheer magnitude was overwhelming. A federal police officer from Boston, who had also been assigned to the bombed World Trade Center, remarked that when he first walked up to the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building, it literally took his breath away.
History’s landscape is littered with inhumane acts. This one certainly ranks as one of the cruelest. There is an implicit contempt and selfishness in the false bravado and cowardice of those who would kill innocent fellow citizens, and do so from a safe distance. Speculation on motive ranges from misguided thinking to criminal forms of protest.
Firefighter at the bombing
Whatever it is, it is a small and mean spirit that places a personal agenda above innocent lives. It assaults the senses and sensibilities of the civilized, causing convulsive and seizure-like reactions. In addition, it is unsettling to note that despite all that has transpired, there are still voices who sympathize with the perpetrators and who even threaten more of the same.
In doing so, they remain forever shackled in Plato’s cave with like minds displaying what he called “the wisdom of the den.”
However, it is Oklahoma’s response to this dark deed that deserves special mention. Sir Henry Gladstone wrote, “Show me the manner in which a nation or community cares for its dead and I will measure with mathematical exactness the tender mercies of its people, their respect for the laws of the land and their loyalties to high ideals.” Gladstone would have rated Oklahoma very highly.
Oklahoma has always had a special place in American folklore. It is known for its oil and quarter horses, Jim Thorpe, Will Rogers and Mickey Mantle, sports galore, the musical Oklahoma, the Grapes of Wrath and the Sooner land run.
To whatever extent it had an identity problem, that has now faded. To its mix of modern and frontier thinking, to being cowboy-tough and self-reliant, more descriptive must now be added. The bombing served as a lightning rod for collective action to help, and to rigorously strive to ensure it doesn’t happen again. From the outset and for days, every car drove respectfully with headlights on, civility reigned, and help poured in from so many varied sources.
The community and the church fleshed out the creed to love one’s neighbor. The good Samaritan did not appoint a committee; he climbed into the ditch himself to help. And like him so many others came together in chorus. The network included federal, state and local agencies, the Red Cross and Feed the Children, rescue teams and dental forensic teams (to name a few.)
Their efforts were in lockstep, and for the most part, they were everyday people who hadn’t lost the instinct to perform extraordinary acts of goodness. Their quicksilver response had nothing to do with putting plastic flowers on unknown graves. It was immediate, personal, physical, and meaningful. It was courage and competence, and it was endurance and grit on display.
For those personally affected by indescribable anguish, it’s as though someone took two of the opposite corners of the universe and twisted ever so slightly to where everything is the same, and yet never the same again. The net cast by the bomb has been wide. The deaths of loved ones have meant shorter guest lists, widows and widowers have learned to eat alone, and families have sat with conspicuously empty places at the dinner table.
Some gained permanent scars and physical impairments. Surrogate parents swallowed hard at the rigors and expense of unexpected parenthood. The dead have long been eulogized, the building has been imploded and the national memorial is complete.
The outrage which courses through our nation’s veins is not just generic. It is over wrongly losing the pleasure of the company of specific people like Charles and Jean Hurlburt who left their fingerprints all over the map. Jean, as a nurse, and Charles, as a dentist and dental professor. Their full lives included leaving their mark in medical work in Africa, local hospitals, the dental school, their choir, the fifth-grade Sunday school room, the hand bell choir, and much more.
They were uncommon, loving, and fun people, and appropriately, in the week of their funerals, Jean was named Nurse of the Year at her hospital, and a colleague of Charles noted that he had “never known a man who had demonstrated a higher level of competence in his professional work and greater depth of character in his Christian life.”
On the rear window of a police squad car at the bombsite was written, “We will not forget.” Questions will always persist. Some will never be answered. For many it took a while for questions to even take form out of the disbelief.
Those who were killed weren’t nameless phantoms. They lived and moved among us as parents, children, spouses, friends, family, teachers, coworkers and neighbors. And their lives still echo on.
It holds true that they won’t be forgotten. But it must also hold true that no one forget that we are our brother’s keepers and that there must be tirelessness in resisting such evil and in going after the good.
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