Oklahoma City remembers bombing of Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building 20 years later
Oklahoma City gathers to remember victims of attack that killed 168
It was a quiet morning in Oklahoma City.
The sky was overcast as people shuffled along to Sunday morning services, while a crowd of more than a thousand stood silently at the Oklahoma City National Memorial.
They were there to remember the bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building, 20 years ago, in a nearly two-hour ceremony. The attack by anti-government US Army veteran Timothy McVeigh killed 168 people.
"You are here not because you can't forget what occurred, but ... because you've chosen to remember," Oklahoma City mayor Mick Cornett said at the ceremony. "Turn back the clock 20 years ago and we were in our darkest hour. It was 60 minutes of terror, but our finest hour has now lasted 20 years."
Bill Clinton, who was president at the time of the bombing, echoed Cornett's sentiments. It was the sixth time Clinton had been in Oklahoma City to remember the bombing.
All the speakers - which included current and former Oklahoma City mayors; Oklahoma governors; James Comey, director of the FBI; and Jeh Johnson, the homeland security secretary - extolled the "Oklahoma Standard" a term coined by out-of-town rescue workers of the hospitality they received while in Oklahoma City.
"By just living by the Oklahoma Standard, you grew faster than ever before and grew far more prosperous," Clinton said. "A breathtaking increase in per capita income in these 20 years, but the material gains were incidental. Every family here who lost someone would give it all up in a heartbeat to have their loved ones back."
It was a quiet ceremony, punctuated by the cries of birds flying overhead and, later, the pitter-patter of drizzle in the reflecting pool separating the crowd from the various speakers and the dignitaries.
After the ceremony, 43-year-old Russ Neasbitt, nephew of Oleta Biddy, a Kansas native who died in the bombing, stood beside Biddy's bronze chair that is part of the memorial and cried. With tears falling from his cheek, he recalled going down to the Murrah Building days after the bombing.
"There was a group of people standing on the street corner, and there was a man standing there with his son," he said, his voice cracking. "He had his hands on his shoulders, and the boy turned around and looked at his dad, and said, 'Maybe Mom went to Grandma's today.' I don't know who that boy was, but I have prayed for him many, many times. But you can't talk about the loss without talking about the good things, what is now known as the Oklahoma Standard. You can't. The two go together."
Henry Biddy, Oleta's husband, was not at the ceremony but had left 20 yellow roses - Oleta's favourite - on her chair a few days prior.
Clinton said the city has recovered from the terrorist attack "in the face of mad, crazy people who think that differences are all that matter".
"The whole world needs you now," the former president said in reference to other deadly terrorist attacks that have occurred around the world.
The Oklahoma City bombing was the worst act of domestic terrorism in United States history.
McVeigh carried out the bombing as revenge for the deadly standoff between the FBI and members of the Branch Davidian sect in Waco, Texas, on April 19, 1993 - exactly two years before Oklahoma City.
McVeigh was convicted on federal murder and conspiracy charges in 1997 and executed in 2001. His Army buddy, Terry Nichols, was convicted on federal and state bombing-related charges and is serving multiple life sentences in a federal prison.
