Where Healing Begins

It was a domestic terrorist act that was meant to divide us. Hear from a man who lost his only child but not his belief in good

- BUD WELCH, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma

I WAS EXPECTING MY daughter’s call that morning, April 19, 1995.

As I sat by the phone, my coffee cup rattled on the tabletop. The next instant, I heard a thunderous sound and the floor shook beneath my feet. I ran to the kitchen window. Blue sky, spring sunshine. A peaceful Oklahoma day. It was hard to imagine anything terrible happening on a bright Wednesday like that.

I hadn’t put on my Texaco uniform that morning; I was meeting my 23-year-old daughter, Julie, for lunch. Proud of her? Everyone who came in for an oil change heard what a great kid I had. She’d caught me bragging on her just two days before. “Dad! People don’t want to hear all that!”

Odd, that visit…Julie often stopped by my service station for a few minutes on her way home from her job at the Murrah Building in downtown Oklahoma City. (Her mother and I were divorced.) Monday, though, it was as if… she didn’t want to leave. She stayed two hours, then threw her arms around me. Julie always gave me a hug when she left, but Monday she held me a long time.

“Good-bye, Daddy,” she’d said.

That was odd too. Nowadays Julie called me Daddy only when she had something really important to say to me. Well, maybe she’d tell me about it that afternoon. Every Wednesday, I would meet Julie for lunch at the Athenian restaurant across from the Murrah Building.