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15 years later, what haunts me are Rebecca's screams
Published: 4/19/2010 9:49 AM
Last Modified: 4/19/2010 10:26 AM

April 19, 1995. Associated Press file

Rebecca. Tulsa World file

That morning. The morning.

At 9:02 a.m. on April 19, 1995, my mother, a high school English and journalism teacher in north Edmond, looked out at the clear morning sky as a violent rumble clattered her classroom windows.

No, it wasn’t a passing train. It wasn’t thunder from a hit-and-run Oklahoma rain shower, either. But she didn’t think much of it.

This is a story she tells often. The now-retired public school teacher of 40 years joked frankly with her kids: “Don’t worry, someone just blew up Oklahoma City.” The class laughed. It was too ridiculous to even consider.

As the thunder bled toward too-calm silence, the school intercom clicked on. “Don’t panic, but we’re getting news reports that the federal building in Oklahoma City has just blown up,” my mother quotes to this day.

Less than a mile away, at nearly that same moment, I walked into the living room of my college boyfriend’s home. That eerie rumble had betrayed my sense of calm. As a journalism student and editor of the college newspaper, The Vista, at the University of Central Oklahoma in Edmond, I felt my first unquenchable journalistic urge to do something.

That propulsive sense of dread that stops the breath is something I still experience, but today it mostly happens on calm, dark nights. I still look out the window, waiting for the smoke and debris to roll over me.

Minutes later, the TV was on, at home and in my mother’s classroom. There was a moment’s thought of “They lie!” before reality shook us all. We stood and looked down at the blinking sets. We were mute, bug-eyed. Horns and shrieks bleated from the small speakers. Chaos reigned.

The Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building was flattened. Smoke soared. Sirens blared. People ran. Cars were flattened like cockroaches.

The scene screamed at us. It kicked me into full journalist mode, as I worked on the campus newspaper. That same moment, my mom’s students bolted from the school. They piled into pickup trucks and rode, en masse to the nearest blood banks.

Through the terror, I also climbed into my car and drove to my school’s small, all-but-abandoned newspaper office. I watched a pillar of smoke swelling like a mushroom cloud over the city I was born, nearly 20 miles away.

I also passed the lines forming at local blood banks. When I unlocked the newsroom, people already were calling wanting to know how to help. This was before online newspapers and instant breaking news. This was before cell phones. We had to get out and gather facts, because we were going to put out a newspaper.

Most of that day — and the following days — were a blur. They still are. So much information was coming in all at once that it couldn’t be parsed fast enough. The victims were entombed in rubble, blown apart by shrapnel.

I was buried by a grim avalanche of facts, editing and sorting and running a newspaper. My mom was at school, consoling students who couldn’t reach their parents who worked in the federal building. Some of those parents already were dead.

In my mind, I knew that friends and their family members were dead, too. I realized this was the worst home-turf terrorist event in American history. None of that mattered. My first priority became informing readers.

Though mired in the story, it was months later before let myself understand the horror experienced by rescue personnel, blast victims and their families.

I thought I could handle it — so I accepted an internship with the investigative unit of CNN. They were putting together a “six-month” retrospective on the bombing and its tie to the 1993 Waco siege that allegedly “inspired” Oklahoma City federal building bomber Timothy McVeigh.

That’s when I started hearing the screams. In my sleep, awake, at work, at night, during daylight, they followed me.

From the makeshift CNN office in downtown Oklahoma City, nearby churches still had boarded windows with decorative stained glass used to be. Metal fencing was laced with teddy bears and weep-inducing cards and yellow ribbons. A lone elm tree still stood. But all I saw was her.

Part of my job for the network was to log hours and hours of video.

Immediately after the bombing, a camera crew was on layover in Oklahoma City when the bomb detonated. They skipped their flight and took a cab to the scene, recording some of the earliest (and most explicit) footage. They simply walked into the carnage and filmed it all, including, for me, what became an iconic image — and sound.

She was the only rescue team member who died from her efforts. She ran in and out of the crumbling building screaming for help, fully aware that people were crushed and dying. Her pleas pierced smoke and punctuated catastrophe. She later died from brain trauma after her head struck debris in the hours after the explosion.

I heard those anguished pleas again as our newsroom televisions later blared live news coverage of the Twin Tower attacks in New York City years later in 2001. Some call it post-traumatic stress disorder. Some call it a flashback. Either way, I still hear her today. I hear her as these words spill onto the page. I weep when I think about her.

And, even though I’ve looked it up and written it down more times than I can count, my brain does not allow me to remember her last name. Her first name was Rebecca.

Coming up on 15 years after the fact, I can only bring myself to drive by Oklahoma City’s national bombing memorial. It’s breathtaking. Heartwarming. Serene. Yet I can’t walk into it.

I’m unable — unwilling — to let Rebecca go. I think about her most often on calm days when everything else around me seems indestructible. Even after all this time, the horror that erupted from that brave and beautiful woman is a ghost that rattles my soul.

Reader Comments

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Joey Mechelle (3 years ago)

This made me cry, Jennifer. Beautifully written, although very sad to remember.

truthseeker68 (3 years ago)

What a tragic introduction into the real world of journalism, but you handled it with professionalism and skill far beyond what could be expected from a young woman working toward her journalism degree back in 1995. Your article touched the hearts of the readers. You told of the event, but by focusing in on one rescue worker who lost her own life in the attempt to save others made this story so very, very unique.

truthseeker68 (3 years ago)

Hope you don't mind, but I put a link to this article on my Facebook page. I want to encourage everyone to read what you have written.

jsc66 (3 years ago)

Thank you for sharing your experience. I lost a couple in the Murrah building who were a special part of my growing up years, Don & Mary Anne Fritzler. They were in the Social Security office. My Dad worked 3 blocks from there for 30 years & my Mom & I drove right by the Murrah building every time we went to see him at work. I have been able to go into the Memorial, but I can't see the Fritzler's chairs without crying...every time. I have not been able to bring myself to go into the museum yet.

W-a-t-s (3 years ago)

Great idea, truthseeker. I will do the same. What a beautifully written account of a day none of us in Oklahoma will forget. I was in Tulsa, in class with a friend whose father worked at the Murrah building and her mother across the street. Her father was in his car, on his way to work from a dentist's office, thankfully. Her mother told me about the glass shards flying through the office, and of still finding them years later, in every corner of the building. I will never forget my friend's face until she reached them both, several hours later.

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