The mission statement we wrote dictated that the stories of the family members, the survivors and rescuers, would be told in the museum…. The survivors’ names would be listed on the site where the Murrah Building stood in a manner separate from those who were killed. It was our task then to determine whose names should be on that wall. We wanted to make sure that we didn’t leave anyone out, and we were sensitive to those who were not at work that day or those who were not injured necessarily … and when those names first went up on the wall, there were some hard feelings. People were really upset because they thought they should be listed on the wall…. I think people felt left out. People I worked with every day who were not at work that day were totally and emotionally affected. There was survivor’s guilt-why you survived at all, or why you were not there at work or why you stopped at a stoplight for an extra three minutes [and were] not in the building at the time, yet could have been. So many people wanted to connect with those of us who were there that morning.
Our divorce rate has definitely shot up. There’s no way you can see statistics because nobody asked you when you changed your beneficiaries and you’re getting a divorce, why you’re getting a divorce. But the divorces are up. The chaplain, he can tell you that the drinking’s up. There’s a lot of older marriages that went south. There’s a lot of people that retired. I mean, a lot now. They wouldn’t say, “the bombing screwed my head up.” They would just say, “I’m sick of this. I’m out of here.”
I’m active in the Retired Firefighters Association of Oklahoma City, and there’s some retired fire fighters there that stood up and said, “This is really screwing my head up, and I’m going to go get help.” They’re still having problems to this day. Maybe they wake up seeing the bomb scene. Maybe they wake up with the smell. It’s just all sorts of things seem to trigger these people off. I’ve been looking to put together a bunch of fire fighters that were involved in the bombing-like a peer-support group, maybe. But that hasn’t happened yet. Fire fighters are real-like I said-the macho-man stuff, and you don’t let people see you sweat. So it’s just really hard for people that were raised that way.
Since the bombing, I’ve never slept more than four hours…. I don’t have dreams, I just, at four hours I wake up. It was never that way before…. I know that that probably falls under the classification of post-traumatic stress. [And] for a while, I really hated God because I thought why would God let this happen. But I finally figured out it wasn’t God that did this, it was Timothy McVeigh.
We’re never, we’re never gonna get over what happened. In December of 1998, some people from the federal government came here to train us about some of the federal assistance that was gonna be provided in case of a terrorist attack. They were talking about what happened in Tokyo with the gas attack on the subway and in New York City at the World Trade Center. But they just skipped right over Oklahoma City.
After it was over, I went up to ’em. I said, “Why’d you do that?”
One of them said, “We know it’s still fresh in your minds, and we just didn’t wanna, you know, cause anybody any problems with it.”
I said, “Buddy, we live with it every day. I mean, you know, it’s more obtrusive to us that you skipped over Oklahoma City and what happened here, trying not to hurt our feelings, than just talking about it. Because we, we were here. We know what happened. It did happen here.”
My son lives in Atlanta, and he sent me a package on Mother’s Day [1997]. It was delivered by Federal Express. The man rang the doorbell and told me he had this package for me. I told him I couldn’t take it. My thinking was, it may be a bomb. I knew my son had called me and said, “Mother, I’m sending you a gift so look out for it.” But I just couldn’t. I told the man, “Well, I tell you what. Just set it down in the middle of the front yard, and I will sign for it. But I can’t take the package.” I don’t know what was going on with me, my mind, but I was frightened to death. I was in fear of everything. It set there for almost half a day. I would go and look and make sure it was still there, but I couldn’t go out there to walk toward it to open it. My son called to see if I had received his gift. I told him, “Yes, I sure did, and it’s sitting in the middle of the front yard. But I’m sorry, I just can’t.” And he said, “Well, go and see if the young man next door will just get the box and open it for you.” I told him, “I think I can handle it. I’ll keep you on the phone and I’ll go out here.” And he coached me: “Mother, it’s from me. Just look at the package. What does it say? Does it say it’s from your son, Leo Waller?” I said, “Yes, it does.” “Is your name on the front of it.” I said, “Yes, it is.” He said, “Well, just pick it up.” I did. I said, “I’ll go in and get some scissors and I’ll come back out and I will take the paper wrapping off of it.” That’s what I did. I opened it outside, in the yard, and saw that he had sent me a beautiful little jogging set for my Mother’s Day.
I think the very most difficult part was returning back to work. When you lose that much staff there’s people that don’t know what’s going on, that kind of thing. But I… coming back to work once it was re-staffed, there was lots of part-times. You know, sitting around in a staff meeting and looking at all these people and thinking, “Who are you? You aren’t supposed to be here.” Kind of almost resentment… [of] the new people, the new hires. Because you’re looking around the room and you’re like, “Who are all these people? I don’t know who these people are.” You want the old people back. So missing…grieving them was very difficult. ….I’m now Vice President of Operations. It’s kind of bittersweet. Because every time I get a promotion I think, “So and so would have been in line for this next.” Not that I don’t do a good job, and not that I don’t deserve it in some respects, but still, you know the reason you got it was because so many people were lost. That’s kind of hard to take sometimes.
While I was trapped that six-and-a-half hours I honestly thought I was going to die. I really, really, really did, that whole entire time. It wasn’t until the end until they said, “Okay, one, two, three,” [and pulled me out] that I thought, “Oh, my gosh. They did get me out.” That’s what made me decide to have a child was those moments thinking, “This is it. I’m dying.” And those little regrets which you regretted in life. I thought, “Gosh, I never had any children. I never experienced that part [of life].” Didn’t even know I wanted to until I thought this was it. So sure enough, we had a baby.
Post-traumatic-stress disorder is, I think, one of the most horrible things a person can face. It started, I would have to say, about a year after the bombing. It came on, and I was very, very depressed. I might be driving down the street, and I’d forget where I was going or I’d forget to use my brake; it was very frightening. It’s a wonder I didn’t have several wrecks. Your mind doesn’t stay focused. Any time I heard a big loud clap of thunder I would jump. The telephone did the same thing. Emergency vehicles. I was associating all of this with the bombing. The main thing that helped was church: Sunday school and church and my faith in God. I’d lost 18 people in the Credit Union. I’d lost my job. I’d lost total complete use of my hands and limbs and everything. And I was just going through all that grief. That’s a powerful thing. It’s very powerful.
I thought after the bombing everything was going to settle down and sooner or later she was going to cope with it. But she sleeps like she’s protecting herself. It’s like she’s scared all over again…. [One] doctor told her she’s all right, it’s all in her mind … but she’s still got glass coming out of her. She’s still got knots in her legs. If you look at her, her face is still messed up, she doesn’t have a regular ear anymore, so when she takes her picture, she wants to turn her head. She says [of her pictures before and after the bombing], “That’s not me.” I told her, “You’re the same Brandy, you’re still my baby, no matter how you feel, you’re still my baby…. “Now she doesn’t even want the kids to go outdoors and play because she wants them in the house all the time. And I can’t blame her, because look what happened to her.
We have a watch that was George Howard’s, who had moved back from our San Francisco office to Oklahoma to be closer to his dad. They recovered George’s body along with a watch that George was wearing that day. So Mr. Howard [George’s father] he decided he would take it to a jeweler to have it checked to see what had caused the watch [to stop]. The jeweler checked the watch and reported back to Mr. Howard that there was no reason why the watch should not work. There was no damage, yet it stopped at the exact time the bomb exploded. On one anniversary, Mr. Howard brought the watch to us to put in our room. He said that he wanted us to have it because it was so difficult for him to see it from day to day.
People wonder how I can just continue to go about my life as if nothing happened. I don’t tell people, “Hey, I had a flashback today while I was in the kitchen.” I have them quite a bit, images of explosions and things like that. But as my therapist would say, “I control them. They don’t control me.” It’s like getting a cramp in your foot. You just deal with it. I’m 36 years old. I’ve got a lot of life ahead of me.
