....I began my online poker journey with $50 at Party Poker. I was prepared to reflect on the last 12 months, however, looking at todays date - April 19 - poker seems, for the moment, utterly trivial and unimportant. Today is the anniversary of the Murrah Building bombing in Oklahoma City nine years ago. I was born and raised in Oklahoma City and have made my home just south of there in Norman for the past 30 years. April 19, 1995 I was driving to work when I turned on my radio in the middle of pleas for donations of blood and where to go. Something bad had happened, but I didn't know what. I thought a gas main must have blown.
When I got to work, I turned on a little tv I had in my office for weather emergencies (I was managing a performing arts facility at the time). I still could not determine what had happened. It wasn't until I got online that the story began to piece together. A car bomb had exploded and destroyed the Murrah Building. People were killed and many injured. As the details and speculation began to mount, shock and disbelief set in. Of course, I, like so many others, immediately blamed "them" - foreign terroists. The shock and disbelief was nothing, though, to the utter outrage I would feel later upon learning that it was one of "our own" who perpetrated this evil.
As the day wore on, I remained glued to the television, radio, internet - anything that would keep me informed. Gradually an overwhelming need to "do something" to help swept over me. I was not alone in that feeling. Thousands of other Oklahomans were feeling the same way. It's what we do. In times of disaster and tragedy we help one another.
Periodically during the reports, a request for needed items at the site would go out. One of the requests was for pillows, blankets, tarps, and umbrellas - bad weather had started to come in. At last - something I could do. I had several umbrellas at the theatre that had been left behind after events and numerous extra pillows and a tarp at my house. I also grabbed every blanket I had and loaded everything in my truck and drove up to the city to the drop-off location, just a few blocks from the site.
After I unloaded, I drove around the perimeter. I stopped somewhere on the north side, grabbed my camera and got out of my truck. It wasn't my intention to rubber-neck. I just had to make it real.
A light, cold rain had begun to fall. I came up to a fence which had gone up and, as I approached, a Red Cross worker came hastily out, followed by someone, she was crying and I heard her say "I just can't take it anymore." Her companion stopped her, embraced her, comforted her. I walked east along the fence until I could see what was left of the face of the building. It was brightly lit by spotlights and work lights. Eerie and profoundly terrifying. It jutted obscenely into the dark sky, violently torn and ripped apart.
Below me in the Soutwestern Bell parking lot, rescue workers gathered in their makeshift headquarters. I was shivering in the rain, but I lifted my camera to take a shot. I knew I was too far away to get a decent picture, but I had to capture it, trap it. I then stood at the fence for a little while longer, my tears mingling with the cold rain on my face.
In the days and weeks that followed, this same fence would blossom into the people's memorial as, one by one, notes, flags, teddy bears, pictures, flowers, candles and mementos were left by thousands of mourners who, like me, had to come see, had to make it real.
I stood on my porch the day President Clinton came in for the memorial. I heard Air Force One fly over head into Tinker Air Force Base. All the church bells in town were chiming. I'm far from religious (a non-believing heathen), but there was comfort in that sound.
I watched the memorial on television. Part way through, the tears began to flow and I wept. From some place deep inside a wealth of grief erupted the likes of which I'd never felt before or since. No one close to me was harmed or killed by the bombing, however none of us was untouched by it.
Ten days after the bombing, on my birthday, I visited the site again. I walked the entire perimeter. The fence was now full of its tokens. Messages for the rescuers were posted in offices windows. There were hundreds of people doing the same as I, yet we were all respectfully quiet. I took more pictures which are in a little album I have, but never open. One year later I visited again when a friend came into town and wanted to go. I was relunctant. It's hard to be there.
A couple of years ago when my brother was visiting, I went again, with him. The memorial was finished by then. I lost it when I saw the chairs. One chair for every person killed, the little ones for the children.
I'm glad one of the men responsible for this tragedy is dead. We won't be subjected to years of annual interviews and retrospectives and watch him grow old while there are parents, spouses, brothers, sisters, children, friends here who can't watch the ones they loved do the same.
I sat in disbelief, watching the same little tv I watched before, and witnessed the second plane slamming into the World Trade Center and, later, the towers' collapse. I have yet to release what I know lies deep inside. I'm not able to cope with it. I don't know that I ever will. I can't "go there" again. It just hurts too damn much and my rage is such that it must remain buried until such time as I can come to terms with it.
My heart went out with every fiber of my being to the citizens of New York and all the families and friends of those who died in the towers and the planes. I was not alone in the despair I felt at such inhumanity and ability to hate at such depths, I'm sure. But I choose to let it lie and, instead, to remember that we have a greater capacity to help each other, to love each other and to choose to make our way in this world in a positive manner. That may sound a little too "Pollyanna'" but, you know, that was my favorite movie as a child.
So that's where my head (and heart) is today. Take a moment to be kind to someone. Honor those who are no longer with us - pay it forward.
