By VICTORIA SCHNAUFER
Columnist
Last week was the twentieth anniversary of the 1995 Oklahoma City Oklahoma Bombing.
Tylar Mead and myself took a girls day and went to Oklahoma City. While we were there we went to the Oklahoma National Memorial Museum. The museum is filled with artifacts from the bombing ranging from pictures of those who died to how they caught the two people responsible for the biggest attack on American soil until September 11, 2001.
The first thing we walked into was a conference room, where we listenedto a tape of a meeting going on in the building to the west of the one that was bombed. The recording caught the sound of the bang made from the explosion. From then on the museum went in chronological order following the bomb. There was constant streaming of news reporters from all over the world playing, a room that hadn’t been cleaned from the bombing and then I reached the room that described how they found the two people responsible for all the chaos. Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols, two former military men, carried out the destruction, killing 168 people in a matter of two minutes by a homemade bomb in a vehicle.
Following the explosion, people were running toward the explosion to help in any way they possibly could, or to grab on to their loved ones that were in the building, People started handing out teddy bears as a comfort mechanism for those whose lives that had been altered.
I learned so much from the destruction that was caused and the memorabilia left behind. My heart broke for the families and friends of those who went through that nightmare.
What hit me close were the children that didn’t survive. There were children my age; I would have been four months old at the time. Families lost the ones they held closest.
After we left the museum I was left with feelings of disbelief. To be honest, I was in awe. Two people caused the nation to go in shock. Actually it was the world. The only reason McVeigh was caught was because of a missing license plate and a courageous cop that was in the right place at the right time.
If he wasn’t caught, people would have been left with no justice and a lot of unanswered questions.
I sat back in my seat on the way home and thought, “wow, a single person is capable of so much.” In my eyes people don’t realize just what they can do. How much pain they can cause, or how much joy they could bring to thousands.
All I could say was, “wow.” My life means so much more than I could have imagined. I can change the world by just a smile. The possibilities are endless. Be a positive change in the world or to someone else. That speaks greater than all the bad a person can do.
Always cherish every moment with the ones you love. We are never promised hours, much less tomorrow.