04/19/2024
It was a beautiful calm Wednesday morning in April that greeted a young couple just a month away from their wedding day. As I was getting ready for work we heard a rumble like I'd never heard before. The walls shook in our home and a large plate glass window rippled the rays of sun light shining through. We both looked at each other and I walked out onto our front porch to see what caused it. As I stood there I could see 8,9 maybe ten neighbors all exiting their homes looking at each other wondering what caused the earth to shake. I quickly drove to my office turned on the radio and listened intently to the radio announcer on the KATT. Someone had said "it was a gas pipeline that had maybe burst/ignited". As I arrived at my office my partner had already turned the television on and we watched as the news slowly came in of the unimaginable destruction that would soon be known as the Oklahoma City Bombing. We prayed for the families of the 168 who lost their loved ones, we grieved with those we knew. Then the stories of the heroic acts of strangers helping those in need began to unfold. In the midst of one of America's worst tragedies humanity could be seen in the hearts and minds of people within Oklahoma City the state the nation. I've never understood the violent acts of those who could somehow justify the death and destruction of innocent lives for political retribution or revenge of government. Acts such as these do little to further a negative cause it only strengthens those of us who remain on this earth as human beings willing to give of ourselves to maybe just maybe give someone hope where it is absent. I will hug my children a little tighter today, I will hold my spouses' hand and say a prayer of remembrance and HOPE that this sort of hate will someday extinguish itself in the kind acts of you, me our neighbors and friends who share this same bond of humanity.
