OKLAHOMA CITY — (AP) — Thirty years after a truck bomb detonated outside a federal building in America's heartland, killing 168 people in the deadliest homegrown attack on U.S. soil, deep scars remain.
From a mother who lost her first-born baby, a son who never got to know his father, and a young man so badly injured that he still struggles to breathe, three decades have not healed the wounds from the Oklahoma City bombing on April 19, 1995.
The bombers were two former U.S. Army buddies, Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols, who shared a deep-seated hatred of the federal government fueled by the bloody raid on the Branch Davidian religious sect near Waco, Texas, and a standoff in the mountains of Ruby Ridge, Idaho, that killed a 14-year-old boy, his mother and a federal agent.
And while the bombing awakened the nation to the dangers of extremist ideologies, many who suffered directly in the attack still fear anti-government rhetoric in modern-day politics could also lead to violence.
A 30-year anniversary remembrance ceremony is scheduled for April 19 on the grounds of the Oklahoma City National Memorial Museum.
Little Baylee Almon had just celebrated her first birthday the day before her mother, Aren Almon, dropped her off at the America's Kids Daycare inside the Alfred P. Murrah federal building. It was the last time Aren would see her first child alive.
The next day, Aren saw a photo on the front page of the local newspaper of Baylee's battered and lifeless body cradled in the arms of an Oklahoma City firefighter.
“I said: ‘That’s Baylee.' I knew it was her,” Aren Almon said. She called her pediatrician, who confirmed the news.
In the hauntingly iconic image, which won the amateur photographer who took it the 1996 Pulitzer Prize for spot news photography, firefighter Chris Shields came to symbolize all the first responders who descended on the bomb site, while Baylee represented the innocent victims who were lost that day.
But for Aren, her daughter was more than a symbol.
“I get that (the photo) made its mark on the world,” Almon said. “But I also realize that Baylee was a real child. She wasn't just a symbol, and I think that gets left out a lot.”
The Oklahoma City firefighter in the photograph was Chris Fields, who had been on the scene for about an hour when a police officer came “out of nowhere” and handed him Baylee's lifeless body.
Fields swept the infant's airway and checked for any signs of life. He found none.
He said the iconic photograph was snapped as he waited for a paramedic to find room for the baby in a crowded ambulance.
“I was just looking down at Baylee thinking, ‘Wow, somebody’s world is getting ready to be turned upside down today,'” Fields recalled.
While he tries to focus more on being a grandfather than politics, Fields said he has little doubt an attack motivated by radical political ideology could happen again.
“I don't worry about it, but do I think it could happen again? Without a doubt,” he said.
One of the youngest survivors of the bombing was PJ Allen, who was just 18 months old when his grandmother dropped him off at the second-floor daycare. He still bears the scars from his injuries.
Allen suffered second- and third-degree burns over more than half his body, a collapsed lung, smoke damage to both lungs, head trauma from falling debris and damage to his vocal chords that still affects the sound of his voice.
Now an avionics technician at Tinker Air Force Base in Oklahoma City, Allen said he had to be homeschooled for years and couldn't go out in the sun because of the damage to his skin.
Still, there doesn't seem to be any self pity when he speaks of the impact of the bombing on his life.
“Around this time of year, April, it makes me very appreciative that I wake up every day,” he said. “I know some people weren’t as fortunate.”
Austin Allen was 4 years old when his father, Ted L. Allen, a U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development employee, died in the bombing. He never truly got to know his dad.
Although he remembers snippets of riding in his dad's truck and eating Cheerios with him in the morning, most of his memories come from friends and family.
“It's just been little anecdotes, little things like that I’ve heard about him over the years, that have painted a bigger picture of the man he was,” Allen said.
Allen, who now has a 4-year-old of his own, acknowledges he's troubled by the anti-government vein in modern-day politics and wonders where it could lead.
“It's such a similar feeling today, where you have one side versus the other,” he said. “There is a parallel to 1995 and the political unrest.”
Dennis Purifoy, who was an assistant manager in the Social Security office on the ground floor of the building, lost 16 co-workers in the bombing. Another 24 customers who were waiting in the lobby also perished.
Although he doesn't remember hearing the explosion, a phenomenon he said he shares with other survivors, he remembers thinking the computer he was working on had exploded.
“That's just one of the weird ways that I found out later our minds work in a situation like that,” he said.
Purifoy, now 73 and retired, said the bombing and McVeigh's anti-government motives were a reality check for an innocent nation, something he said he sees in our society today.
“I still think that our country is naive, as the way I was before the bombing, naive about the numbers of people in our country who hold far right-wing views, very anti-government views,” Purifoy said. “One thing I say to tell people is ‘conspiracy theories can kill,’ and we saw it here.”
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