On April 19, 1995, I was driving my ’68 Charger to work (which was close to downtown OKC) heading East on I-40. About 5 miles away, I saw a mushroom cloud appear (at 9:06 am), and I was thinking one of the pilots from Tinker Air Force Base went down or something (note: my car radio was turned off the whole time).
I get off of the interstate and started to drive North to work, and there was a very thick dark smoke cloud coming from Fred Jones Ford remanufacturing plant (where a lot of Model T’s were made at), so I took the scenic route to get back onto major roads trying to avoid fire trucks and such.
I drove North through the intersection of NW 6th St and Classen and saw a retail shop worker trying to sweep glass out from a doorway (onto the sidewalk) and I was thinking, a really upset customer must have left there.
When I arrived at work, a lot of people were outside looking towards downtown (couldn’t see much from that location), and again was thinking what was up.
When I got to my desk, a co-worker asked if I had any trouble getting to work. I said yes, I was running late, for I was to clock-in at 9am and it was currently about 9:30 (I’m usually not late for work). He then said he saw it. I said saw what? He said he was staring out his 4th story window looking downtown drinking coffee, then the bomb went off. My work was about 3 miles from the OKC federal building, but you can’t see it from there. He said debris blew up what appears to be a couple of miles up and he said he saw the shockwave on its way out. Our building suffered a couple of cracked windows.
My wife was about 3 blocks from the bombing, working in a rehabilitation hospital (again, not direct line of sight). She said the lights went out, the ceiling tiles all down and every one was physically moved. She finally got outside of the building and couldn’t see a thing from all of the smoke and dirt in the air. This was a few months before I met her. Our 19th anniversary will be in a couple of days.
If I had looked down the road, from where the person was sweeping up the glass, I would have saw bombing site. I was fixated on the glass being swept up and didn’t notice anything else.
I do remember the front (solid) axle of the truck was blown 9 blocks away(!), and the VIN from that axle is where the investigation started from.
A few years later, my wife and I attended a big family reunion on September 8 & 9. We took Monday (September 10) off and took our time to drive home from Arkansas. I also took Tuesday off to unpack, wash clothes, etc.) and was listening to the radio that morning eating breakfast, when they said a plane flew into the WTC. I said that had to be something big, because they wouldn’t report it if it was something small -, so I turned on the TV and a few moments later, the second plane hit – so I pretty much watched almost all of it live.