The blast from the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building bombing found Polly Nichols in a northwest corner office on the third floor of the Journal Record building, where she worked as the executive director of a nonprofit. The office was just across the street from the federal building, so the blast was devastating, collapsing the ceiling, rolling through the walls and creating projectiles of shattered glass, one of which caught Nichols in the neck, nicking her carotid artery.
“I was on the board of Integris at the time,” Nichols said, “and I could still speak even though the glass had damaged one of my vocal chords. So when they loaded me in the ambulance, I asked the EMT to take me to Integris. He said, ‘Lady, you don’t have that kind of time.’”
The memories of the “day of darkness” are vivid for Nichols, as they are for many of the survivors and family members who waited hours or days to hear that their loved ones were alive or that their bodies had been recovered. This is the 30th anniversary of the bombing, and while three decades is objectively a long time in the context of a life, when looking back on trauma, time compresses and the moment is relived in the retelling, so the survivors experience many of the emotions they felt that day.
The theme for this year’s commemoration is Day of Darkness, Years of Light, and the survivor stories here begin in horror and end in hope, and much of that hope is embodied in the children and grandchildren who suffered terrible losses that day or who would hear the stories years later of parents and grandparents they never met.
Nichols is fully aware of how narrow her chances were on that ambulance ride; it’s one of the reasons she asked for Integris. Dr. William D. Hawley, a thoracic surgeon at that hospital, was one of only about 60 physicians in the country who could do the work necessary to save Nichols. He happened to be at Saint Anthony’s that morning to visit a friend who was scheduled to have surgery. He saw Nichols being wheeled down the hall, accompanied by a general surgeon. He realized his specialty would increase the odds of a successful surgery. Outside that serendipitous set of circumstances, Nichols might not have survived to experience the years of light, an ever-present reality for her.
“Right after the bombing, everyone seemed to need to know someone who was involved,” she said. “They wanted to hear the stories, to know the people involved, to understand what had happened. It was overwhelming for me at first, because I felt like I couldn’t give that much to so many, but now it’s one of my favorite parts, and my life has been different than it would have been because of the people I’ve met and talked to along the way.”
People light
Nichols remembers all the medical staff who helped her that day and in the short recovery that followed. Many of the other survivors and family members tell similar stories of first responders, Secret Service agents, clergy, mental health professionals, neighbors, family, friends, doctors and strangers, all eager to help, to be useful, to unbreak what was shattered. It was a collective goal to push back the darkness and reaffirm our shared humanity in an outpouring of love, support and hope.
Clint Seidl, now of Shawnee, lost his mother, Kathy Seidl, an investigative assistant with the Secret Service, in the bombing, but the family waited three days to hear that awful news.
“I was in school (second grade) when my dad came to get me,” Seidl, a firefighter and owner of CS Plumbing, said. “He’d been out of town working when a family friend called and told him what happened. We went to my aunt’s house in Midwest City, and we camped out there for three days. Two Secret Service agents cooked and cleaned for us while we waited. When we got the news that her body had been recovered, I went downtown with my dad, and we identified her body.”
Seidl said it didn’t take long to adjust to his new life, one without his mother.
“After the funeral and all the information about what happened, you’re thrown into a new routine and lifestyle. I saw the changes super fast, so I realized that this was my life now.”
That life included speaking engagements, interviews with journalists like Katie Couric and inclusion in the 169 Pennies campaign, a grassroots fundraising effort to build the OKC National Memorial & Museum. Seidl’s victim impact statement was also the last one presented during the sentencing phase of Timothy McVeigh’s trial.
“Ultimately, my dad had to read it for me because of a defense objection to me reading it,” Seidl said.
The overexposure of some of the children who lost parents led them to avoid the annual commemorations — Seidl said he’s not sure he’ll be at the 30th — and some even avoided researching or reading about the bombing, even as the amount of information available online grew with the expansion of the internet.
“My grandparents went to the memorial services every year — they’d lost their daughter — but I only went the first couple years and then stopped until my grandparents asked me to go with them to the 20th anniversary. I haven’t been back since. I got my fill of information as a kid. I probably went to D.C. 20 or more times, so I stepped back from all of it. As an adult, I got back into some research because I was curious about motives.”
Seidl’s four children, ages 18, 15, 11 and 4, and his two jobs occupy most of his time now. The 24-hour shifts firefighters work means he sometimes gets zero sleep before heading off to a plumbing gig. His oldest son, the 15-year-old, rodeos, so they spend a great deal of time on the road, traveling to events. Perhaps there is hope in the reality that the bombing and the tragic loss of his mother doesn’t occupy his mind constantly; his life has largely been lived in service to his community as a firefighter and to his family as a father and husband. That is certainly redemption of a sort.
Focus on children
Children played multiple roles in the Murrah bombing and its aftermath. Those who died in the daycare constituted our most anguished memories and indelible images of the horror that unfolded. Grown men wept as they carried tiny bodies from the wreckage, which itself served as a metaphor for what happened to the interior and exterior lives of the parents who lost their children that day and the dreams would haunt them for years after. How do you reckon with the slaughter of our tiniest and most innocent family members?
Children have always been the victims of violence, and they have served as touchstones of change — “do it for the children” is a too common refrain — but they have also been living memorials of hope, imbued with possibility, and so not just memorials, but also promises of a better future, a rebuilt city and families with a will to move forward.
Kylie Nicole Scott Williams turns 30 this year. Her father was Scott Williams, a salesman for William E. Davis & Sons Food, who was making a delivery to the childcare center when the bomb exploded. Her mother, Nicole Williams (now Flick) delivered her three months to the day later. The name Kylie had been chosen before her father’s death, and Scott was included as an homage to him.
Kylie would eventually be diagnosed with sensory integrative dysfunction, which means she has cognitive and emotional issues, including difficulty managing anger, emotions and skills like reading and writing. Her mother is more succinct: “Kylie is turning 30, but she’s still about 4 or 5 emotionally and developmentally.”
The morning of the bombing unfolded normally for Nicole — a message from Scott that he was stopping by the Murrah Building for a delivery, and work as usual — until a young man walked into the office and told her the federal building blew up.
“I panicked and started paging Scott,” she said. “I called the number we were instructed to call and left my office number. I couldn’t leave after that, because they’d be calling that number with updates. But at the end of the day, I knew he wasn’t alive. I told my co-workers and family that he’d have found a way to let me know if he was OK.” A week later, she received notification that his body had been found in the daycare. His chair in the memorial is with the children’s chairs for that reason.
Kylie’s special needs would eventually make it impossible for her mother to work outside the home.
“I was able to work for about seven years,” Williams said, “but Kylie would start off loving a day center, but a change would set in shortly after she started. She can be a lot, so I’d start getting phone calls asking me to come get her. I had to resign to stay home with her.”
Williams remarried and took the Flick family name when Kylie was 7. She has two sons from the second marriage, ages 20 and 21. Flick said Kylie and she always talked openly about her father, but “her maturity and understanding are very limited.”
Kylie was the subject of intense curiosity in the years following the bombing. Reporters — some credible, some not — looking for a story sought out interviews with children like Clint Seidl and Kylie Williams, and it’s easy to understand why. The emotional impact of the bombing on the children and the emotional impact of the children on readers and viewers made for a more compelling story, but it also drove some reporters to behave in ways questionable or outright unethical.
“I’ve had to be very cautious about who I talk to and who I let Kylie talk to,” Flick said. “Early on, we had a very bad experience with Star Magazine, where a reporter turned a simple phone call asking about Kylie into a full story that I didn’t give my permission for. A KOCO reporter was kind enough to help me get a story out to not buy the magazine, because I didn’t want people to think I’d sold Kylie’s story.”
Kylie finds ways to learn about the father she never knew. Family stories help. The wedding video of Nicole and Scott was a particularly emotional bridge that generated an awareness that she would likely never marry. Flick had never watched the video and never went to the museum before Kylie became interested.
“The past two years, she’s really been asking questions about her father,” Flick said. “We have a family friend in Tuttle she talks to when she’s upset. He’s been very helpful. When we finally went through the museum, there is that moment when you feel the shudder from the explosion, and she asked, ‘Is this when my daddy died?’ I didn’t want to go, but a friend convinced me I’d regret it if I wasn’t there for her first time through.”
Kylie participated in the Memorial Marathon last year, running the 5K with the family friend, and this year, she’ll be joining her grandmother in the 5K. She provides a constant reminder of the day of the bombing, but Flick is quick to point out that Kylie is also very much like her father in an important way: “She brings hope and life to everyone she meets.”
Bridging generations
Kylie and Clint are the first generation of children impacted by the bombing. The second generation is now tasked with carrying the story forward. Kari Watkins, president and CEO of the Oklahoma City National Memorial & Museum, speaks passionately about the importance of the task.
“This is a new generation, and these memories will fade if we don’t take time to remind people of the stories,” she said. “It’s important to take time to stop and remember, take the 168 seconds of silence to remember what we’ve lost, but also to acknowledge how far we’ve come. We take time to figure out how to unify ourselves, so it’s important to note that we don’t want to remember without teaching.”
The educational component is familiar to anyone who has taught across generations. Each successive generation forgets key components to their parents’ wars and tragedies: WWII, Vietnam, Desert Storm, the Murrah bombing, 9/11 — all create the need to tell the stories, to remind the listeners, to emphasize the cost of violence, but to buttress hope for healing and new growth too.
Polly Nichols becomes emotional quickly when speaking of her granddaughters, Addison (18) and Megan (16) Starling. The girls have always shown an interest in the bombing and their grandmother’s story. She tells them how much she hated the Survivor Tree at first, the sad, bedraggled survivor that is now a symbol of growth and vitality. She reminds them it’s the roots that make it what it is, not what it looked like then. She wants them to dig down and find the roots of their stories and their path forward.
Megan, a sophomore, is also a Girl Scout. She is working on her Gold Award, the equivalent of the Eagle Scout for boys.
“She’s working on a new Scout badge for her capstone project,” Nichols said, voice full of pride and emotion. “It’s a long process, but she’s determined, and it’s an idea she came up with on her own. The badge will be for girls who learn about the bombing and visit the Memorial.”
It’s impossible not to find the light in stories like that. Yes, we suffered a day of darkness, but we have lived into the light ever since, so we take time to mourn the losses, remember the victims and educate new generations. But we also indulge in hope because we have rebuilt, and something beautiful stands on the grounds of what was, for a few months, a horror show.
Visit memorialmuseum.com for information about the museum.
This article appears in OKC Ballet Shorts.