Month: April 1995

Daily Oklahoman (Oklahoma City, OK)
April 21, 1995, Friday CITY EDITION
Neighbor Cares for Boys When Mom Doesn’t Return

BYLINE: Bobby Ross Jr., Staff Writer

SECTION: NEWS; Pg. 1

LENGTH: 489 words

Thirteen-year-old Ricky Hill and his brother Jonathan, 11, waited
up late Wednesday hoping to hear from their mother.

Even as they drifted off to sleep, they clung to hope that Army
recruiter Lola Renee Bolden, a 40-year-old single parent, had
survived a thunderous bomb blast.

But her call never came.

The boys’ distress turned into a real-life nightmare about 1
a.m. Thursday.

That’s when three men and a woman, all clad in their best Army
green, arrived at the door with the horrible news.

Neighbor Mechelle Murray, a single parent with children
herself, had taken in the next-door neighbor boys when their mother
failed to return home.

Even while calming Ricky and Jonathan, Murray had feared the
worst.

“I immediately thought, Oh my God, Renee works in that
building,’ ” the 38-year-old accounting student said of the bombing
of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building.

The Army personnel, who included a chaplain, revealed rescuers
had pulled Bolden unconscious from the federal building’s wreckage,
Murray said.

But the 15-year Army veteran, who worked in a fourth-floor
recruiting station, had not survived.

The news devastated the boys.

Ricky, who already had red eyes from earlier crying, broke down
after the Army people left. But Jonathan held back his tears.

“(Jonathan) talked about his mother and how he always told her
he loved her,” Murray said. “She had turned 40 on April 1st, and he
was proud of the birthday card and picture he made her. ”
The card and picture remained on Bolden’s door Thursday as her
children awaited arrival of relatives from Alabama.

The single mother had transferred from Colorado to Oklahoma just
last January.

Asked about the move, Ricky mumbled softly that his mother might
still be alive if they’d stayed in Colorado.

“She was kind, funny,” he said, when asked what people should
know about her. “Kind of a clean person,” he added, laughing.

Asked if he had a fondest memory, he replied, “Lots of them.

We’d have pillow fights and stuff. ”

Thinking a little more, he added, “She tried to get us what we
want. ”

“In other words, you’re spoiled,” Murray interjected, with a
smile.

Lying on a bed watching television, Jonathan was polite when
approached.

But, as he was slowly eating an ice cream sandwich, he said he
could not think of anything to say.

Murray took responsibility for the neighbor boys because their
mother’s death left them with no Oklahoma family ties.

Bolden and her sons rented a second-floor condominium next door
to the Murrays at Piccadilly Square, 2600 N Ann Arbor Ave.
Through their sons, Bolden and Murray developed a friendship,
though their busy lives prevented a close relationship .

Murray was a picture of calm during most of her interview with
The Oklahoman, but she broke down in tears as she contemplated the
boys’ fate.

“What hit home to me ,” she said , “was that she had no family
here. ”

May 15, 1995, Monday CITY EDITION
Injured Fight To Rebuild After Bombing

BYLINE: Bobby Ross Jr., Bryan Painter, Staff Writers

SECTION: NEWS; Pg. 1

LENGTH: 1640 words

More than three weeks after the bombing that nearly killed him,
Fred Kubasta leans back in his reclining chair, a yellow blanket
covering his propped-up legs.

Flowers, cards and letters, including a child’s note that begins
“Dear blasted person,” fill his Nicoma Park living room. These “get
well” tokens rest alongside stuffed puppies and rabbits and two
teddy bears signed by his No. 1 team, the Dallas Cowboys.

A recently developed snapshot shows Kubasta, in his 10th day at
Presbyterian Hospital, trying on Pro Bowl wide receiver Michael
Irvin’s Super Bowl ring.

“That was the first time I had really seen Fred smile” since the
bombing, said his wife, Joan, who believes a guardian angel must
have had a hand in her husband’s “miraculous survival. ”

At least 490 people were rushed to Oklahoma City area hospitals
in the hectic hours after the April 19 bombing at the Alfred P.
Murrah Federal Building, a survey by The Oklahoman has found. Not
all survived.

That number of injured, higher than previous estimates, does not
include the numerous people treated at the scene, or the unknown
number who, like Lorri McNiven of Edmond, made it home in a daze,
then realized they needed to see their private physician.

Most of those fortunate enough to survive have begun the
difficult task of rebuilding their lives.

Only nine bomb victims remain hospitalized.

But, as Kubasta understands all too well, rebuilding won’t be
easy.

On this particular day, the 63-year-old seems content with his
circumstances, but his thoughts have drifted outdoors, where his
garden and his favorite birds await. However, his body, not to
mention his wife, won’t let him go – at least not for long and
certainly not without his cane.

A splint is wrapped around his right hand and forearm, holding
together the thumb that barely managed to stay attached and the
forefinger that he can hardly move. A scar on the left side of his
neck reveals where his carotid – the main artery that pumps blood
to the head – was ripped open. He still has glass embedded in parts
of his body.

Numbness persists on the left side of his head, and he catches
himself pinching his ear.

“I got to reach up and make sure it’s still there,” he explains.

Melissa McCulley never knew what hit her.

“It sounds really corny, but it kind of felt like I was getting
pulled into the ground,” said McCulley, 20.

She was working her part-time job as a clerk with the General
Services Administration on the federal building’s first floor.

“I was buried under a bunch of stuff. I tried to get myself out
at first, but nothing budged,” she said.

It seemed like forever, but rescuers soon heard her screams.

They cleared a path to pull her out of the rubble.

She suffered small cuts and a dislocated hip but said she is
fortunate. The rescuers carried her outside to the street, where
other people placed her on a stretcher. Her injuries were not
life-threatening, so she waited until about 11:30 a.m. for an
ambulance to take her to Southwest Medical Center.

The 1992 Putnam City High School graduate went home the next day.

But the pain – physical and otherwise – has not gone away.

“It’s still painful, but it gets better every day,” she said of
her injuries. “I have a nice, ugly scar on my leg, but I’m lucky to
have a leg.

“I feel lucky, but I feel guilty at the same time because there
were people that didn’t survive. I feel bad when I talk about being
lucky. ” McCulley, a University of Central Oklahoma human resources
major, headed back to work earlier this month, albeit in different
surroundings.

“Everything’s hectic because we lost everything and we lost
people in the office. … It’s going to take a while before we get
back to normal. ” April 19 never wanders far from her mind.

“I’m paranoid all the time. I think, What if I would have been
here? What if that? ‘ You can’t get it out of your mind, no matter
how hard you try. ”

The list of victims on the day after the bombing gave Susan
Urbach’s condition as “good. ” It identified her injuries as
“multiple lacerations. ”
That’s one way to describe someone with 200 stitches.

A terrorist attack on Oklahoma City was the last thing anyone
expected on that picture-perfect Wednesday morning.

But Urbach said she was emotionally prepared, at least to a
degree.

“Last year, I had dealt with a lot of death issues: serious
illness and death with family and friends and many deaths that were
unfair,’ ” she said. “I’ve looked at my own mortality, and in fact
about four to five months ago I had made out my own will, planned
out my own funeral.

“I don’t want to die, but there are things that I had done that,
had that happened, would have made it a little easier” for others.

Looking back, Urbach points out that the bombing dealt everyone
“a different hand. ”
As the regional director for the Small Business Development
Center of the University of Central Oklahoma, her hand was dealt as
she stood in the doorway of her third-floor office at the Journal
Record Building. That building is across the street from the
federal building.

Fortunately, she was not facing the window. Unfortunately, she
was the recipient of a back full of glass, falling plaster from the
ceiling and part of a concrete wall.

She spent two days in Presbyterian Hospital.

Besides physical healing, Urbach said, she deals with
“theological issues. ”
“I have a really hard time when someone says, God decided to
spare you,’ ” she said. “Because if that’s true, then the opposite
is true – God decided not to spare others – and that’s not the God
I serve. ”

Lorri McNiven blacked out almost immediately.

When she regained consciousness a half-hour or so later, water
was pouring on her. The mother of two, a claims representative for
the Social Security Administration, thinks the water may have been
what woke her up.

Her contact lenses blown out, she could see only pitch black.

Sirens wailed. Smoke floated through her nostrils.

At first, she thought it was only her, that maybe she had suffered
an aneurysm or a heart attack. Then she discovered herself moving
through the debris, broken metal and cement rubbing against her.

Relief came when she spotted flashlights from the perimeter.

When she waved her arms, rescuers found her.

She remembers looking at her watch. It was 9:50 a.m.
“I had cuts on my face and was soaking wet and shaking. But I
wasn’t severely hurt. ”
Emergency personnel led her to the triage center. She stayed
there a while before a volunteer took her home.

Once home, she showered and fielded a telephone call from her
relieved husband, Doug. Only later in the day did she visit her
family physician, Dr. Michael Herndon.

Herndon stitched up her face. It was up to her to let heal the
bruises that covered her body.

“I had fiberglass and insulation all in my clothing and in my
hair,” she said. “It took a couple of days of showering to get it
all out. ”
For McNiven, the physical recovery may be over.

But she struggles emotionally.

Regular chores like vacuuming take twice as long.

“We need to get back to work before we can really start to
heal,” she said. “Because when we get back to work, there’s going
to be so many people not there, it’s going to affect us even more
than the funerals we’ve been attending the last two weeks. ”
Her office lost 16 of about 50 employees in the building that
day.

“The magnitude of this is still going to hit us further on down the road. … It’s going to really hurt when we start doing our
jobs and look around at all the people we have lost. ”

For Kubasta, a pasteup artist for the Journal Record newspaper,
the ear-piercing boom came during the layout process for the next
day’s legal section.

Moments earlier, he’d sipped a cup of coffee and peeked outside.

He turned back around to concentrate on his work, his back toward
the window, just before the explosion.

The force from just across the street blew him at least 15 feet.

He was briefly unconscious.

“When I woke up, all I could see was dark,” he recalled. “It was
real foggy, and I was more or less trying to yell. ”
Blood poured from his neck. Alternately, he crawled and walked,
desperately searching for a way out. He didn’t know what had
happened. It would be many more hours before he would learn the
horrible truth.

Kubasta collapsed when a co-worker, Journal Record proofreader
Steve Wallace, grabbed him and said, “Fred, we got you. ”
He would spend 11 days in Presbyterian Hospital. The first few
days, he was in intensive care and in serious condition. He left
the hospital April 29, the day after the Dallas Cowboys’ visit.

Now home, Kubasta battles to recover – mentally and physically.

The incoming letters, cards and notes help pass the time.

“It keeps your mind occupied,” he said. “Because when you’re not
occupied, you start thinking about everything – everything that’s
bad. ”
Thunderstorms, which have occurred frequently since April 19,
strike fear.

“I hear boom’ and just jump,” he admits.

His wife provides comfort, tracking the lightning and giving
advance warning: “Now, there’s going to be another boom. ”
He longs to return to work, but worries that maybe he won’t have
a job when he is ready. The Journal Record was sold last week.

He dreams about the day when he can venture out his front door
without his cane or the wheelchair required for longer errands.

Before that day, though, lies a long, tough road.

Just check Kubasta’s schedule of doctor and therapy
appointments. It’s probably similar to the schedules of many
victims.

“Almost every day of the week, we’re going to be going
somewhere,” Joan Kubasta said.

“It’s a long way to go, but he’s going to get there. ”

Daily Oklahoman (Oklahoma City, OK)
May 15, 1995, Monday CITY EDITION
Compassion, Closure Draw Record Crowd

BYLINE: Bobby Ross Jr., Staff Writer

SECTION: NEWS; Pg. 1

LENGTH: 622 words

On a sunny Mother’s Day perfect for an outing, Laurie Conaway of
Norman and her mom, Lynnette Wooten, knew where they wanted to be.

With rescue efforts over and the Alfred P. Murrah Federal
Building’s remains soon to be demolished, they saw Sunday as their
last best chance to view a somber piece of history – in person.

“We wanted to see it and take some photographs,” Conaway said.

“It really makes it more personal. ”
Thousands of people had the same idea.

People wearing church clothes and Mother’s Day corsages mixed
with those clad in shorts, T-shirts and sunglasses.

All stood in silence as they leaned their heads back, blocked
the sun with their hands and peered high at the nine-story building
where so many died.

An apparent record crowd surrounded the wreckage of the
bombed-out federal building on Sunday, getting what Reba Dooley of
Idabel described as the “full scope you cannot see on television. ”
“Basically, everybody’s saying it’s the largest crowd they’ve
had,” said Sgt. Bill Ward of the Oklahoma City Police Department.

Ward said a picture-perfect holiday, the impending demolition of
the federal building and a special memorial service for survivors,
friends and family members combined to draw visitors “well into the
thousands” to the building destroyed by a truck bomb on April 19.

The memorial service was held inside a chain-link fence at NW 5
and Robinson.

The off-limits area around the building has been reduced so
sightseers can get as close to the building as across the street.

However, the boundaries are expected to expand outward again before
the demolition nears.

Richard Dean, an employee of the Social Security Administration
who had worked in the building, said the memorial service was
designed “to bring everybody together – immediate families and
those who survived. ”
A program for the service carried a photograph of the bombed
building and this message: “We Will Never Forget. ”
“I’ve worked there (Social Security) for 20 years, so it was a
big piece of my life,” Dean said of the building and the people.

The service “was a last chance to say goodbye and to lay a wreath. ”
Flowers, heart-shaped wreaths and inspirational poems covered
the fences surrounding the perimeter, where mothers, fathers and
their children came to pay a final tribute.

Hundreds came armed with cameras and video recorders.

“This is something our kids will read about in their textbooks,”
said Eric Gudgel, who traveled from Stillwater. “I just wanted to
see it before they demolished it.

“I feel kind of bad even bringing my camera,” he said. “It’s
kind of like an amusement park. But I’m glad people are out here
showing their support. ”
Jorita Beard of Oklahoma City lost a friend and a friend’s uncle
in the explosion. She paid her second visit to the site Sunday,
bringing along her 9-month-old daughter and other family members.

“Just to see it,” Beard said of why she came. “It’s kind of a
visit, I guess, for closure. ”
A friend of Doug and Lea Ann Minton also died in the bombing.

“We just wanted to get a picture as a memorial kind of thing,”
Doug Minton said.

Wil Wooten, who came with his wife and her daughter, said it was
important for people to see the destruction firsthand.

“I equate it on a small scale with something like the Holocaust
in World War II,” he said. “I think it’s important for things like
this to be remembered for generations to come. ”
Many said they felt almost an obligation to come.

“I didn’t come at first out of a fear of interfering,” said
Leigh Ann Ferrill of Oklahoma City. “It almost makes me sick to
look at it. ”

“Not a lot of smiling faces, are they? ” her brother-in-law said.

Daily Oklahoman (Oklahoma City, OK)
April 28, 1995, Friday CITY EDITION
Child’s Ready Smile, Affection Remembered

BYLINE: Bobby Ross Jr., Staff Writer

SECTION: NEWS; Pg. 20

LENGTH: 899 words

Fifteen-month-old Danielle Nicole Bell was asleep when she and her
mother arrived at the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building about 8:30
a.m. that tragic day.

When Deniece Bell, 28, lifted her daughter out of her car seat,
Danielle opened her eyes and leaned her head against her mother’s
chest.

As the mom explained Thursday, the blue-eyed, light-brown-haired
beauty liked to show affection that way.

Once inside the America’s Kids Day Care, Deniece Bell said she
kissed her baby on the forehead, handed her a cup of milk and
hurried to work at the post office two buildings away.

“She didn’t like to be away from me,” Bell, a 1985 Douglass High
School graduate, said of her daughter, who clutches a stuffed teddy
bear in a treasured snapshot.

But Danielle didn’t mind spending Mondays, Wednesdays and
Fridays at the federal day care.

Before new management had taken over three weeks earlier, “I
used to have to chase her to get her to come home with me,” Bell
recalled, laughing. “But she was just getting used to the new one. ”
Bell remembered that on the first day Danielle encountered the
new faces in charge, she was reluctant to let her mother leave.

But Colton Wade Smith, 2, who would later die along with
Danielle and his 3-year-old brother, Chase Dalton Smith, reassured
his friend. Colton softly placed his hand on Danielle’s back and
promised her, “It’s OK. ”
“I’ll just never forget that,” Bell said. “I just remember
seeing all those kids every day, especially Colton and Chase. ”
As a result of Colton’s comforting hand, Danielle didn’t cry
that day. She also shed no tears when her mother said goodbye that
Wednesday, April 19.

“That’s what everybody remembers that ever saw her: She was
always smiling,” Bell said.

Sherita Bell, Deniece’s mother, nicknamed her granddaughter
“Pooter. ”
“She was just a very happy baby,” said the grandmother, who kept
Danielle on Tuesdays and Thursdays. “Always, all the time, full of
love. ”
The Bells can’t recall exactly where the Pooter nickname came
from, but it stuck.

When her grandmother called her Pooter, Danielle knew she ruled
the world. But when her grandmother used Danielle, she knew she had
done something wrong and had better make quick amends. That usually
involved flashing her widest smile and wrapping her arms around her
grandmother’s legs.

Deniece Bell had worked at the post office for six and a half
years. It was the only time she and Danielle ever really parted.

They slept together. They took baths together.

Bell chose the America’s Kids Day Care partly for its convenient
location. But there was another reason.

“You thought that was the safest place for a kid to be was in a
federal day care,” she said, the irony of her statement not lost.

At 9:02 a.m. that day, Bell was in her boss’s third-floor office
when she heard a thunderous boom and the building shook back and
forth. She held on to her boss’s desk to keep from falling.

She then ran downstairs and outside, toward the federal building
to check on her daughter. Hysterical and screaming, she watched the
“bloody, bloody” people coming out of the Murrah Building’s south
side and wondered what had happened to Danielle.

A police officer threatened to arrest her if she did not stay on
the right side of the curb, but she didn’t care. They would have to
restrain her to keep her from finding her baby.

Finally, officials told her that the children would be taken to
St. Anthony Hospital.

Then it was Children’s Hospital.

And for four days, Deniece Bell and her family would make
regular checks of all the hospitals, holding out hope that each
“Jane Doe” would be Danielle. In the midst of tragedy, they even
endured prank calls from people falsely claiming to have seen the
child.

On Saturday, all hope faded.

The medical examiner’s office confirmed Danielle had perished in
the bombing. Despite the numerous hours that had passed, the news
was shocking. “I thought she was alive and still in there,” Deniece
Bell said.

A police officer would later tell the Bells he pulled Danielle’s
body out within 10 minutes of the explosion. But a photograph,
which the officer saw on television, was not enough for positive
identification.

“I would have loved to have known that first day,” the mother
said.

On the day after her daughter’s funeral, Deniece Bell remained
angry Thursday. Angry at the authorities who waited so long to
inform her. Angry at the national media she claims have invaded her
privacy. Angry at the federal officials she believes have hidden
pertinent information. And angry that a tragedy she thinks could
have been avoided wasn’t.

“There was no security,” she said. “There’s no security in my
building. There’s no security in that building. The federal
courthouse has all the security because of the judges.

“There wasn’t even a guard. I just assumed because it was a
federal building it was safe. ” Deniece Bell said she “feels bad for the adults. ”

“But,” she added quickly, “those kids never had a chance. And I
knew a lot of those kids. ”

A teary-eyed Sherita Bell propped up her chin with her
knuckles and, sniffing, delivered this message:

“Everybody out there that has a child, be sure to love them and
hug them and tell them that you love them because they can be taken
away – in a blink of an eye. ”