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THURSDAY • SEPT. 8, 2011
A city remembers; cannot forget By Tim Talley
compound in Waco, Texas, killed 168 people in Oklahoma City, inAssociated Press cluding 19 children at a day care. The Molotov cocktail explosion OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) — this summer illustrated again how Before Sept. 11, there was April sensitive people in Oklahoma City 19 — when a truck bomb sheared are to any potential threat, said Suaway one side of a federal building san Winchester, whose sister died in in middle America and proved that the federal building attack. anyone, anywhere, can be attacked. “I think we’ve experienced firstThe combination of hand that it’ s not sometwo tons of fertilizer thing to take lightly. You and fuel oil in Okla“I’m sure it immediately put your homa City destroyed could happen memories and experithe notion that people again. I hope ences into play,” she content to live far from it doesn’t, said. “You realize it’s the nation’s biggest citsomething that is very, ies and tallest buildings but the way very real and somewouldn’t be targets of the world is thing that can happen. If terrorism. today, you you’re in a place where As the nation prepares never know.” you’ve not gone through to observe the 10th anniversary of the Sept. — Shirley Ferguson, 72, that, you might not take it as seriously. You know 11 attacks, many Okla- of Oklahoma City. that it can happen.” homa residents are still In the latest case, aucoping with the fear or anxiety set thorities say a 15-year-old boy was off by the earlier bombing. When playing with Molotov cocktails bea Molotov cocktail blew up alongfore the fatal fire that killed an elside an Oklahoma City home this derly couple. Shirley Ferguson, 72, summer, people’s thoughts and talk whose neighbors were the ones instantly turned to the 1995 explokilled, said anyone is vulnerable. sion. “I’m sure it could happen again. “Every time you see a bombing on I hope it doesn’t, but the way the TV, you think of the Murrah buildworld is today, you never know,” ing,” said Tom Kight, who didn’t she said. “It makes me concerned learn that his stepdaughter was about the evil that’s around.” killed in the attack until five days afFerguson’ s daughter, Sherie Asterward. “I’ve lived with anxiety. You bell, 53, said the emotional impact see some of the bombings, whether of the Oklahoma City bombing and it’s Afghanistan or Iraq, you’re going the firebombing in her mother’ s to flash back.” neighborhood are “too closely reAl-Qaida’s attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, killed nearly 3,000 people lated.” “That brought a lot of fear back to in New York, Washington and me,” Asbell said. Pennsylvania. Timothy McVeigh’s “It can happen anytime — anybombing of the nine-story federal body, anytime,” said neighbor Bob building, in retaliation for a 1993 Bosse, 64. “You just hope that it government raid on a religious
In this July 27, 2011 file photo, construction continues on One World Trade Center, left, in this aerial photo in New York. The tower has reached the 76th floor. (AP Photo/Mark Lennihan, File)
won’t.” McVeigh, an army veteran, was convicted of federal murder and bombing-related charges in the Oklahoma City bombing. A co-conspirator, Terry Nichols, was convicted on federal and state charges and is serving multiple life sentences. McVeigh was executed on June 11, 2001 — three months before the attacks targeting the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. On Sept. 11, Richard Williams felt an awkward kinship with New York and Washington. Williams, who needed 150 stitches to close wounds on the right side of his body after the Oklahoma City bombing and lost dozens of colleagues and friends in the attack, said he “got that same, sick gut feeling those people got on April 19th.” “My first reaction was to pick up the phone and call my fellow survivors, people I knew. Here was that
same feeling of understanding what those people were beginning to go through,” he said. Williams, 65, who was at a business meeting in the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building at 9:02 a.m. on April 19, 1995, said little things can still put people on edge. “Hardly a day goes by in Oklahoma where we don’t hear something about the bombing,” he said. “Just to hear a fire engine, or a loud noise, or a sonic boom from Tinker (Air Force Base near Oklahoma City), any one of those things can trigger an emotion.” As the 10th anniversary of Sept. 11 approaches, “I know what they’re ready to go through, physically and mentally, and that brings anxiety for me,” said Williams, who has since retired and is living near Houston. “You see more and more (9/11) documentaries. It brings back that sickness, that sick feeling you get in
your gut because it makes you relive it, but I think that’s part of the healing process.” Winchester, whose sister Margaret Clark was killed in the Murrah building bombing, said she has benefited emotionally from a memorial erected at the site of the blast — something victims in New York and Washington don’t yet have. “Any time something like that happens now, I think there is compassion from anyone in Oklahoma, particularly anyone directly involved in the bombing here,” she said. “There’s just a very personal side of knowing what those people are going through.” Kight, 72, said that despite the time that has passed, the pain has stuck with him. “Our memories as we get older, they fade to a certain degree,” Kight said, “but I’ve got a picture in my mind that never (goes away).”
HISTORY THROUGH THE LENS OF THE VISTA July 1991
In 1986, the space program was booming. But, when the space shuttle Challenger exploded mid-launch, the world was shocked.
In 1991, after being called Central State University for two decades, CSU became the University of Central Oklahoma.
9-11-2001 Never Forget
April 1995
WEATHER
January 1986
September 2001
In 1995, when OKC was rocked by the bombing of the Murrah building, The Vista put it front and center.
TODAY
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Today, The Vista pays tribute to the 9/13/01 issue of our paper. The first issue following the attacks on September 11, 2001.
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DID YOU KNOW? New York City has more trees than any other city in the US has people
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