Day by Day with María: #WeRemember: the 25th anniversary of the Oklahoma City bombing

When I first arrived at the site of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building on April 19, 1995, to report on the Oklahoma City bombing for Catholic News Service, police lines and makeshift shelters had already been drawn by emergency crews.

Budding spring gardens downtown had instantly succumbed to military tents, hastily erected to serve as temporary morgue, as ATF/FBI evidence gathering sites, and as a canteen for rescue workers.

Law enforcement and fully armed military personnel lined the streets, carefully eyeing every approaching person. Breathing masks, bloodied bandages, and much broken glass testified to the human carnage that had taken place there just a few hours earlier. Thick grey dust covered everything.

Overhead, helicopters circled the downtown perimeter, accusingly pointing a flood light at the streets.

The sounds of sirens, voices, and motors blended with the humming of drilling equipment at the site—where workers used lighted cranes to cautiously proceed with rescue operations around the clock.

Northwest of the building, a block-long square area had instantaneously become an international media center, camera crews mixing with fallen debris, van food vendors, and smashed up cars demolished by the blast.

Reporters talked on mobile phones to frantic editors; photographers pointed their high-powered telephoto lenses at rescue operations on the site; and television crews staked out their live, on-the-spot, reporting areas.

When I first saw the building, I stood speechless before the sight of human evil.

"It's worse than the most horrible Friday the 13th movie you can imagine… You can't walk out of this theatre," 25-year-old Steve Mavros told me as he sat on the sidewalk.

Mavros and his trained dog Bucephalos, members of the Oklahoma Canine Search and Rescue out of Tulsa, were some of the first deployed to the site to identify the location of victims.

"We would have a hit—a human find—but only find a piece of a body,” described Mavros, silently petting Bucephalos.

On that fateful spring morning, 168 people died—19 of them children, in addition to three babies still in utero. Hundreds of survivors were maimed, injured, forever scarred.

For the first few weeks after the bombing, Oklahoma City held its breath. Functions were canceled. Businesses silently closed. Professors discharged classes. Students attended prayer services. A week after the bombing, a tire shop owner declared, “businness is just dead. No one is going anywhere.”

Several days after the around-the-clock coverage, a local sportscaster, faced with the nightly litany of scores, verbalized everybody’s feelings when he spontaneously admitted, “I’m sorry. I just can’t do scores tonight. It just seems meaningless.”

It is important that we remember April 19, 1995.

Remember the lives of those who died, not only where they died. Remember the victims' families. Remember those who survived, and those still struggling to heal.

Remember the tireless rescue workers who risked their lives in the still-trembling building to find survivors, and eventually, to bring the dead home. Remember how they would silently bow their heads in impromptu prayer before leaving the bomb site.

Remember TV and radio journalists openly sharing their faith on the air; volunteers serving food to weary teary-eyed firefighters; ‘Thank you for your work of love’ scribbled on a boarded up window near the site.

Remember how there was no looting in that wrecked downtown, and how crime was virtually non-existent for several days in this city of 500,000. “Pray” silently proclaimed on billboards throughout the city.

Remember how the money turned in after the blast from the Federal Employees Credit Union vault housed in the Murrah building exceeded the money originally held in that vault.

We must always remember— remember that the stories of human goodness, generosity, and compassion overwhelmed and conquered one despicable act of evil.