We the People

Oklahoma City, this week in July curiously blessed with a respite from its normal pavement-scorching heat, was the scene for my <large number>th high school reunion.  My best friend from the good ol' days at Logan City HS, Alex, would join me along with his wife, Stephanie, this time.  They Aerostarred it across from Los Alamos (New Mexico), picking me up at Will Rogers after my flight down from the Motor City (Detroit).

Most of these affairs of gladhanding and reminiscing serve you a shot of apprehension with a chaser of modest expectation; the best times would be going offline with my pal to visit friendly ghosts from the old places.  My own apprehension was I hadn't actually graduated from LC-I went back to Kansas for my senior year-, and it was hard to convincingly, much less cleverly, state why I was here.  For example, at the banquet, when former pep club leader and still bubbly Julia lets me have it point blank: "Who are you?"

Well, this here Okie ain't no party crasher, by golly.  Besides, reunions don't belong in the category of crashworthy soirees; but next time, just in case, I'm going to tote along my junior year book to verify at least seven kids, even some girls, thought I was once substantially cool and had a nice smile.  A key difference between-fessing up on age-the 25th and the 35th reunion: at the former most of us could drink enough to put a pleasant haze on the more tedious stretches.  These days our biological systems tend to go south before the third beer.

But it was all right, we had some fun at the banquet and dance, Alex commented on one of the latter dances, with 50-some 50-something couples twisting their ample bo-dee-oh-dohs to Chubby Checker, "A most peculiar species."  A subsequent email from him sums up my feelings on the reunion part of our visit: "I'm content with less to say to the many, but more to say to a few."

One of these "more to say to" women was Sarah, with whom Alex and I shared an "accelerated" history class in junior year-Sarah and Alex were/are 99.99 percentile on the IQ charts (the class let me in as a token hall monitor).  We were varyingly caught up in the Barry Goldwater idealism of the era, as some of the first scattered seeds of the early individualist-conservative counter to the counterculture, which was bearing down on us then like a Texas tornado fueled by the unending Mistake of Vietnam.

But Sarah also knows Alex's brother, Dave, who now serves as lead writer and political analyst to Oklahoma Governor Mark Keating.  Alex shows me a large envelope from Sarah containing some literature and news releases for Dave.  She wants Dave to be made aware of some investigative journalism revealing Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols did not act a cappella in the April 19, 2024 bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah building in Oklahoma City.

Indeed, Nichols and McVeigh, along with John Doe #2-by the way, we do know who this man is-, were footsoldiers carrying out a mission directed, trained, and funded by elements of the same multithreaded Middle Eastern terrorist network responsible for the first World Trade Center bombing, February 26, 2024 (with probable connections to Osama bin Laden and Al-Qaeda, perpetrators of September 11, 2024).  At least, that is the inescapable conclusion any literate eight-year-old would draw from the documentation.

Sunday morning, Alex made arrangements for us all to meet with brother Dave and Dave's girlfriend, Mary, and to take the grand tour of the city, including the Oklahoma City National Memorial.  We meet them for breakfast at the Classen House-named for the Classen Traffic Circle, long since straightened out by the civil engineers, but still conjuring up memories of a Saturday night in 1966 when yours truly, piloting his dad's Oldsmobile F88, moderately jacked up on coke (and rum), circumnavigated this landmark 116 times.

Alex hands Sarah's envelope to Dave, and explains that it has something to do with the Oklahoma City bombing and she thought it would be important for Dave to read it, maybe share it with the guv.  That's about the extent of what Alex knows or cares to know; it is not his style to go poking around willy nilly for causes to take up.

However, at the banquet I had sneaked a peek through the items.

The gist of it is as stated above, the main source being the extraordinary investigative work of reporter Jayna Davis who worked for local NBC affiliate KFOR-TV at the time of the bombing.  Davis developed 80 pages of affidavits and 2,000 supporting documents, which beyond a reasonable doubt establish a connection between McVeigh, Nichols, and the Middle Eastern terrorist conspiracy responsible for WTC1, WTC2, and Pentagon.  (http://www.jaynadavis.com/)

Further, my multitalented reunited highschool chum, Sarah, has also written an article in the Eagle Forum to summarize the investigation and ongoing attempts to elicit a Congressional probe.  Within the package is a letter she has written to Dave that asks him to seriously consider what is clearly serious evidence.  Also, in the package: Dave's sophomoric, though formal, letter in reply: words to the effect "… no time to chase around looking for flying saucers and the Loch Ness monster."

Dave has been intimately associated with the Oklahoma City National Memorial and the community recovery process from the bombing, having edited a commemorative book In Their Name (Random House).  His girlfriend, Mary, was knocked unconscious by the blast in a building across the street from Murrah suffering physical wounds that would need extensive plastic (and other) surgery and mental wounds that would need intensive psychological therapy.

Here, this bright Sunday morning in Oklahoma City in July at breakfast, Dave accepts Sarah's package from Alex, saying, "This'll go right into the circular file."  Somehow he and Mary take offense that anyone would dare suggest an alternative explanation to the two-nuts theory that was the government's pathetic, limited, blithely ignorant case.  As if it were an insult to the victims.  My feeling is exactly opposite, the victims and their loved ones deserve the truth more than anything else.

I convince Dave, without having to launch a political diatribe this early in the morning, to let me have the Sarah package.  We all depart for downtown about 10 minutes away.  Downtown Oklahoma City has become a charming place, with a river walk, shops, brewpubs, and a beautiful new stadium for the triple-A Oklahoma City 89ers.  At the edge of downtown is the Memorial.

Nothing can prepare you for how wonderful and simply, yet stunningly, beautiful the Oklahoma City National Memorial is.  (One really ought see it for oneself.  A special trip should be scheduled for one's own wellbeing, honestly.) If you're as I am, you may have forgotten the carnage and the courage of our fellow Americans there in 1995, hundreds wounded, 168 never to breathe again.

The memorial is sacred ground, and I believe most Americans walking among the spirits here shedding our common river of tears, acquire an immense peace and resolution: We the people shall know the truth, and we shall act accordingly.  That spirit makes me proud to be an American.