In my life there are three national events that I can remember vividly. Even though I was a little child, I remember the assassination of JFK, the 9/11 attacks and 6-1/2 years before 9/11 the Oklahoma City Bombing.
This year is the 30th anniversary of the Oklahoma City Bombing, the deadliest act of domestic terrorism in United States history. On 04/19/1995 Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols parked a rented Ryder truck loaded with ammonium nitrate fertilizer and fuel oil in front of the Alfred P. Murah Federal Building. The bombing was motivated by their anger at the FBI and the federal government for the handling of Ruby Ridge and the Waco Branch Davidian siege. They chose the Murah Building due to its glass front and the number of Federal agencies that had offices there: The Drug Enforcement Agency, the Secret Service, Department of Housing and Urban Development, Department of Transportation, the General Services Office, the Social Security Administration and the US Customs Service. The date, 04/19/1995, was the second anniversary of Waco.
At 9:02 AM they detonated the truck bomb killing 167 people inside the building and a nurse who was responding to the emergency when a piece of the building fell and hit her on the head. The bomb injured 684 other people and damaged or destroyed 324 other buildings in Oklahoma City, causing an estimated $652 million in damage. The last survivor, a 15-year-old girl, was removed from the wreckage of the building at 7PM.
McVeigh and Nichols were convicted in 1997. McVeigh was executed in June 2001 and Nichols was sentenced to life in prison. As a result of the bombing, Congress passed the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 as well as legislation to increase protection around Federal Buildings.
The Murah Building was demolished on 05/23/1995. In its place the Oklahoma City National Memorial was built. A portion of the foundation of the building remains on the grounds to help give an idea of the size of the damage. The memorial was dedicated on 04/19/2000, the 5th anniversary of the bombing by President Bill Clinton. The memorial is part of the National Park Service.
The memorial consists of two large gates at the end of a reflecting pool. The gate at one end shows the time of 9:01 AM and the one at the other end 9:03 AM with the pool representing 9:02 AM, the time the bomb was detonated. The south end of the memorial has a field of bronze and stone chairs, one for each person that was lost that day. The chairs are laid out by which floor they were on in the building with 19 smaller chairs representing the 19 children who died in the blast, 15 of which were at the day care center in the building. The memorial is a beautiful and meaningful place, especially at night when the chairs and gates glow from lights shining on them.
If you attend the International Convention of the Insurance Professionals (IAIP) in Oklahoma City, June 19-22nd and can only visit one location while in town, I hope you will make it the Oklahoma City National Memorial that pays tributes to the lives lost.
About the Author: Brenda McDermott, CPCU, CLP, SCLA, CIIP, SCLA, ARM, AIDA, AIC is a workers’ compensation claims specialist in The Hartford’s Major Case Unit. She is a past International Rookie, Claims Professional of the Year, Risk Management Professional of the Year and International CWC Speak-Off winner. She was the 2022 Region V Insurance Professional of the Year. She has been a long-time member of IAIP and served in multiple offices at the local, state, and regional levels. A Past Region V RVP she is currently serving as the Region 5 Marketing Director and Assistant to the RVP. She is Co-Chair of the International Marketing and Today’s Insurance Professional Committee. She is an MAL in Region 5 from Missouri.