The 20th Anniversary of the Oklahoma City Bombing

Floor Speech

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. Speaker, when I was a boy, my father used to point out to me that there were certain moments, certain events, that not only defined, perhaps, a community or a generation but that left an indelible mark on a person. He referenced me to go speak to my grandparents about where they were when the news came that Pearl Harbor had been bombed. I can remember my Grandfather Lucas describing the exact field, the exact row that he was picking cotton in in December of 1941 when one of the neighbors stopped and asked, ``Have you heard?''

My father could tell you exactly the moment, while walking down the street in Elk City, Oklahoma, when he walked up on a crowd that was staring in the window of a store that was selling televisions. Everyone's mouth was down. Everyone was aghast at the news from Dallas.

In many ways, the experience of 2 minutes after 9 a.m. on April 19, 1995, has had the same mark and the same effect on not only me and on my colleagues in this delegation but on our communities in the country. Like my grandfather in his remembering the moment that he found out about Pearl Harbor and like my father in the moment he understood that President Kennedy had been assassinated, I will never forget sitting with the Oklahoma delegation, waiting to give testimony in a BRAC hearing in Dallas, when a reporter tapped me on the shoulder, a reporter I had known for some time.

He said: ``We have a report that there has been an explosion at the Federal building in Oklahoma City. They say the building is gone. Your district office is in one of those Federal buildings

in downtown Oklahoma City. Which building are your people in?'' It is a moment that I will never forget.

The delegation got up, and, en masse, we rushed out into the lobby. There on the television monitors was the building that we recognized as the shell of the Murrah building. It, literally, was gone.

My folks were spared, but, on that day, 168 of our good fellow citizens in Oklahoma City were not. This Sunday morning, we will gather to remember that event of 20 years ago, an event that has changed us all forever.

I am proud of my fellow Oklahoma delegation here today because we still work just now as we did 20 years ago to address those issues.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Source