1/15

This is an opinion column.

I’d long since left my hometown, but it still hit home.

I was in an office high above Midtown Manhattan on this morning 30 years ago when Timothy McVeigh parked a rented Ryder truck across the street from the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City — a rented truck containing a 5,000-pound bomb. He lit several timed fuses and strode to his nearby getaway car.

I grew up in Tulsa, about 90 miles northeast of where — at 9:02 a.m. in Oklahoma, 10:02 a.m. in NYC — the truck exploded. Where 168 people were slaughtered, including 15 children who were inside a daycare center on the first floor.

Where countless more lives were changed forever, still changed after 30 years.

The federal workers who died that morning had simply gone to work that day, like every day, to do their jobs. To do their jobs for us. For this nation.

I had not lived in Tulsa since I caught a flight for college almost 20 years before that morning, but my stomach curdled as the news broke on the TV in my office. Curdled at the horror. Curdled at the images of smoke, of debris, of the nine-story building, half standing, half lying in a grave of rubble, steel and glass.

Curdled because Oklahoma was still home.

It was many more years before I went to OKC and visited the site, the memorial that now honors those federal workers and children who perished there at 9:02 a.m. and seeks to comfort those who lived. Those who were touched that day and are still tortured by it.

It’s a solemn space, still fertilized with the blood, the ashes and the cries of those who were there, and the tears of those who loved them.

Many will return to the site today to remember that morning when OKC hit home for all of us. Among them is scheduled to be former President Bill Clinton, who was in his first term on that day three decades ago and hosting a White House news conference on — yes — terrorism. At 10:02 a.m.

In a three-part docuseries, “Oklahoma City Bombing: One Day in America,” Clinton said: “I wanted to scream. Then I said, ‘No, you can’t do that. You don’t get to scream.’”

Many did. Some still are.

A lot has happened in those 30 years, a whole lot. So much that when I mentioned the bombing to a young friend recently, she had not heard of it. Did not know of OKC. Had no knowledge of the deadliest act of domestic terrorism in our nation’s history.

It was as much a historical black hole to her as was the 1921 Tulsa race massacre. Generations never learned about it in school, were never taught about that egregious act of domestic terrorism. In Oklahoma.

“I barely remember 9/11,” she said.

I shook my head. As I began telling her about the bombing, I wondered: How should we teach that history?

I’m sure the bombing is taught in schools in my home state. I’m sure a child cannot grow up in Oklahoma without learning about what happened on that day. On that day when hell hit home.

We should all know that day, especially now, especially when 30 years after America mourned and raged at the attack on federal workers, our president and his billionaire buddy (or ex-buddy) are casting federal workers aside like worn-out chew toys. Like they’re disposable, unworthy of the right to do the job they committed to do.

For us.

To Donald Trump, Elon Musk and those among you slathering in anticipation of lower taxes, fired federal workers are oh, well — they’re collateral damage. Not men and women and families now scrambling to navigate lives without jobs. Not Americans stripped of their livelihoods because a greedy corporation did not meet its financial targets, but because a greedy and gutless faction of the nation just wants more.

 How do we teach that?

How do we teach the depths of the depravity that was the man now executed for the bombings when the president whimsically pardons with the stroke of a pen those who threatened our democracy, who threatened its foundation and the lives of those elected to uphold it?

Those who are now so emboldened, I pray there is no McVeigh brewing among them.

How do we teach that when we snatch young learners from other nations off our streets in broad daylight, like Rumeysa Öztürk, a Tufts University doctoral student from Turkey; or in the dark of night from their apartments, like University of Alabama doctoral student Alireza Doroudi from Iran. When we ship them to dark unknown places without the due process we once held sacred.

How do we teach about the evil that conceived and executed OKC when we’re snagging mothers and fathers from each other’s arms, from their jobs, from their children, and deporting them to nations where they’ve not lived for years without the due process we once held sacred?

How do we teach about OKC? How must we teach about OKC?

Without fear of its horrid truths. Or fear, especially, of those today who demean and diminish the legacy of all who entered the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City — in my home state — on this morning three decades ago to simply do what they committed to do.

For us.

Let’s be better tomorrow than we are today. My column appears on AL.com, and digital editions of The Birmingham News, Huntsville Times, and Mobile Press-Register. Tell me what you think at [email protected], and follow me at twitter.com/roysj, Instagram @roysj and BlueSky.