Editor's Notebook

(This was originally published in 1995.)

The morning didn’t start off unusual.

It was a Wednesday and I knew I needed to quickly get back down to the newspaper to wrap things up before the press got revved up.

I had exited Rubys Restaurant for a morning coffee conflab and was standing in the parking lot talking to then city manager David Hughes when we heard what sounded like thunder.

It was 9:02.

We both glanced northward but without a cloud in the sky both dismissed the noise and climbed into our cars.

By the time I drove back to The Register there were reports of a gas explosion at a downtown Oklahoma City building.

Excellent reporting by television and radio reporters began to shape what had actually taken place.

First there were reports of fertilizer pellets scattered everywhere.

Not being the mastermind bomber, I had no clue what that meant but was soon educated as to what it meant by someone in our office.

Quickly people were beginning to understand this was a bombing.

That was bad enough.

Then came the news there was a Day Care on the second floor and that there were innocent babies that were surely killed, not to mention the innocent workers that had merely showed up for their jobs that morning.

The images that followed are burned into every and anyone that was watching.

Thing was, we are also in the news business and deduced we were going to need to carry a story.

With the clock ticking, by now it’s about 10-10:30 a.m. on press day.

When I really get in the zone, I start barking orders more like a Drill Sergeant than Judith Martin, a/k/a Miss Manners.

I started using my outdoor voice telling staffers to get me this and get me that.

I was needing all the information available to put together a story in downtown Purcell about a story in downtown Oklahoma City.

We even had a photographer on the ground at ground zero but we were still using film and there was no dark room available.

Otherwise, we would have had art to go with our front page story that afternoon.

I’ll never forget. We hit the streets at exactly 2:30 p.m. Our deadline.

A former resident and avid reader bopped into the front office of The Register and said, “Hey in case you haven’t heard there’s a big news story happening in Oklahoma City,” the reader said with a chuckle.

I said I know and you can read about it right there pointing to our front page.

I stick by my story of 30 years ago. I’m pretty sure we were the first newspaper in the country on the streets Wednesday afternoon with a Murrah Bombing story.

We carried stories and photographs for weeks to come getting the local angles, and there were many stories with ties to Purcell, Lexington and McClain County.

One thing in the coverage in both The Oklahoman and The Norman Transcript Sunday that seemed to be overlooked was the terrible thunderstorm that came the night of the 19th when first responders were still on rescue missions.

Also, remember some one said they needed gloves for the rescuers.

They finally had to make an announcement 24 hours later, “Please don’t bring any more gloves.’

The Oklahoma Standard had been born.

As the days drug on it became abundantly clear that you did not need Kevin Bacon’s seven degrees of separation to know the tragic news hit home.

We were no different.

Fellow newspaper people Don and Sally Ferrell of Chandler lost a 37-year-old daughter, Susan, in the blast.

Ironically, Gracie and I were ticketed to go on a short three-day trip to Las Vegas with Don and Janet Woolly leaving on the 20th.

With our bags packed in the back part of the house and the horrible news on the tube, then 10-year-old Matt Montgomery tearily asked me for us not to go.

With assurances all would be fine, we did not cancel our plans.

But it was an eye-opening excursion.

During our time in Vegas, anytime it would become known we were from Oklahoma everyone around us would offer consolation. It affected the entire country.

Still does.