Remembering
Fifteen years ago the United States was hit by a terrorist attack when the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City was bombed. The attack killed 168 people and injured 680 of them. It was a horrible day that I remember very vividly. At the time I was in college and remember walking out of our cafeteria to see reports of the bombing coming across the television. I still have the Boston Globe from the next day. At the time I remember thinking that this was an enormous moment in my life and that our lives as Americans would change very dramatically over the next few years. We could not imagine something this devastating.
Just a few weeks later I started to formulate my senior thesis project for the next year and immediately knew I wanted to study the Oklahoma City bombing in more depth. More than a year later I completed my thesis, a look at how our civil liberties would be impacted due to domestic terrorism. In the thesis I hypothesized on building security, the use of technology to uncover terrorist planning, the tightening of the second amendment and even Federalized security procedures at airports. Rereading the thesis it is remarkable how naive my writing is at times, but also how much of an impact this attack had on our lives, even if you do not realize it today because of the even worse atrocities to come.
Today I thought a lot about the people who gave their lives in Oklahoma City, their families whom I got to know through my research, and how that moment fifteen years ago shaped me and our country. Yet with all the changes we have gone through and yes, the infractions on our civil liberties, we have found a way to make it work. To run a marathon, play a ball game and celebrate our patriotism. All in one day. Whatever Patriots Day means to you, remember what it took to get us here and what it will take to get us to another one.
