For spring break and Easter in 1995, we took our children back to Tulsa, Oklahoma. All three were born there, and the weather would be warmer than on the shores of Lake Michigan in Wisconsin.
Our plan for Wednesday, April 19th, was to make the 90-minute drive to Oklahoma City. We wanted to visit the National Cowboy Hall of Fame and perhaps check out the state Capitol building. It was providence (God’s will) that we decided to skip that trip because we would be heading back to Wisconsin in a day or two. More travel was not high on our priority list. We elected to visit the Gilcrease Museum and other attractions in Tulsa instead.
Although we had lived in Tulsa for close to eight years, the Gilcrease Museum had not been an attraction for us during our time there. After the visit, spending time at Tulsa’s Rose Garden, and visiting other sights that morning, we headed to Jim’s Coney Island for gyros and hot dogs. We had been there many times when we lived on East 40th Street. Jim’s was the best place in town for gyros. As we ordered and watched in amazement, reporters were covering the bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City!
We would have been there!
Timothy McVeigh and his co-conspirators had wrought vengeance against the federal government for its assault on the Branch Davidian complex in Waco, Texas, two years earlier…to the day. Nineteen children at a daycare facility in the federal building were killed among the one hundred and eighty-four others who died in the blast. That was thirty-one years ago.
We could have been there, but through the grace of God, we were only witnesses.
