14 Years Later OK City Bombing Still Fresh In Memories of Many

For myself that day 14 years ago brings different memories in addition to the losses felt in OK city as that day was also the last day my beloved maternal grandfather spent on this earth, and we spent that last day reflecting on his life as well as watching the sick goings on across the TV screen and where the country was as well as were it was headed.

On that April day I awoke and went to work as usual only to receive a call that grandfather who we called Papa who I was very close to was a German immigrant that came to America in the 1920's with his mother and baby brother to the new world without a father was gravely ill and my plans immediately changed.

Due to illnesses of those early days so prevalent around the globe, he had already lost 2 fathers before 10 years old in the old country of Europe and would lose another in the now world of America after their emigration, as his third dad fought against his homeland of Germany in WWI on behalf of America as a proud American citizen, which my grandfather himself would repeat in WWII also fighting as a proud English speaking American who would survive the war to come back and start a family bringing him 2 wonderful girls, one of which became my beloved mother in 1964.

He spent the next 50 years as a hard working Chicago area Tool And Die entrepreneur, who was eventually a very wealthy man that lived a long and prosperous life by all measures until the year 1995 when I was 30 myself in which he had a severe heart attack on April 3rd and was sent home after the initial hospital stay to essentially die as his heart had terribly weakened from this second heart attack. And being 85 years old didn't help matters as there were certainly no heart transplants on the agenda for a man of such advanced age.

Again that April 19th would turn out to be his last day on this earth, and sadly the last news story and pictures of America he would curse that day and what it was sadly becoming even then, 14 years ago as we watched the Oklahoma City Bombing unfold on TV together until he slipped into unconsciousness and left this world sad from seeing that day's events unfold, I said to myself then the world was going to hell in a handbasket and if there was a better time to be leaving this country and earth then that moment was likely it.

Well I was wrong as there have been many low moments since then we as Americans have experienced but up to that day the only worse day was back in 1941 at Pearl Harbor, then this OK City tragedy to be followed a few years later on nearly the same day the Columbine disaster and then of coarse 911.

Where does or will it all end, no one knows but that day sure seemed like one of the worst and still 14 years later still does to me and many others who lost their loved ones that day to the sick f*&^ that the left loved to invoke the name of who I wont even mention here as he doesn't deserve more recognition than he already has received. Here's some news footage of that day embedded below

Loss still felt 14 years after OK City bombing

The Associated Press:OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) — It was 14 years ago when Doris Battle's parents were killed in the Oklahoma City bombing, just two of the 168 people who died during the nation's worst domestic terrorist attack.

"I can't go home and see him anymore," Battle said of her father, Calvin Battle, who died with her mother Peola when the Oklahoma City federal building was bombed on April 19, 1995. And Battle said the passage of time has not diminished the loss she still feels.

Battle was among 400 people who gathered Sunday to observe the 14th anniversary of the bombing of the nine-story Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building, an attack that also injured hundreds of people. The explosion of a truck loaded with 4,000 pounds of ammonium nitrate and fuel oil tore the face off the building and caused millions of dollars in damage to other downtown structures.

Timothy McVeigh was executed in 2001 and Terry Nichols is serving multiple life sentences on federal and state convictions for their convictions in the bombing. Prosecutors had said the plot was an attempt to avenge the deaths of about 80 people in the government siege at the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas, exactly two years earlier.

Dr. Paul Heath, a retired psychologist with the Veterans Administration and a bombing survivor, attended the ceremony at the bombing memorial, where 168 empty chairs symbolizing the victims sit on a grassy field where the building stood.

"The memory of the bombing is just as clear today as it was the day after the bombing. The memories run just like a video in my head," Heath said, who placed flowers at a granite memorial for survivors like himself. continued

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