In the wake of last year’s tumultuous presidential election, we have seen a great deal of brow-furrowing about a “divided America.” We are supposedly split by race, by class, by region, by politics, even along secular and religious lines. Some on different sides of those divides prefer to wallow in bitterness and suspicion. When the Census Bureau reported the results of the first national head count of the new millennium, the headlines virtually ignored our promising growth. Instead, they dissected and sliced us into various minority packages, each with a presumed bundle of grievances. Suddenly, we are told, the diversity that we always thought made us vibrant and successful as a nation has become a crippling affliction.
McVeigh believed that, too. He is a hater. He thought his act would instill more hatred and bitterness. In fact, he failed miserably for the very reason he refused to admit: America is far better than he supposed.
We are divided by race? So who were those people on the streets of Oklahoma City on the morning of April 19, 1995? I saw them, and the cameras captured them, as they rushed to aid the injured. There are some memorable images of groups of volunteers loading the wounded into makeshift ambulances-whites and blacks and Vietnamese-Americans and Indian-Americans hoisting stretchers together and embracing those who were terrified and lost. The only color that was truly evident that morning was the red of the victims’ blood.
Class defines us? During the rescue and recovery operations that followed the bombing for 21 agonizing days and nights, fire and police personnel who came to Oklahoma City were housed in makeshift dormitories at a convention center several blocks from the Murrah Building site. Night after night, I saw “rich” people working long shifts in the food-serving lines. Junior Leaguers showed up to put fresh sheets on cots and do the laundry. When there was helping work to be done, no one cared about income levels or country club memberships.
We are split by region-North and South, coasts versus the midlands? The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) Urban Search and Rescue teams that came to Oklahoma City hailed from Florida and Virginia, from California and New York. They worked side-by-side with Oklahoma emergency personnel in some of the heaviest lifting imaginable, bringing out the dead. There were many different accents to be heard, but they spoke with one voice: compassion. I remember a midnight recovery of one of the victims. The FEMA crews uncovered the body and stepped aside to salute as local firefighters brought the victim home, draping a flag-an American flag-over the stretcher.
Are we fatally split by the rancor of politics? I have no idea what parties or ideologies were present in Oklahoma City, and I don’t care. In the first days after the bombing, Jesse Jackson and Newt Gingrich were there to lend what support they could. At a memorial service on April 23, 1995, President Clinton and Texas Gov. George W. Bush sat in the same row.
Is there a religious-secular divide in our nation? Right now we are discussing the wisdom of President Bush’s proposed faith-based initiatives to involve local religious organizations in life-bettering social efforts. The owners of a high-rise building in downtown Oklahoma City launched their own faith-based initiative on the night of April 19, 1995; they illuminated windows in the form of a cross, and it loomed like a beacon over the recovery operations for the next three weeks. On the ground, chaplains comforted the grieving and held impromptu curbside prayer and debriefing sessions for the workers. Volunteers handed out angel lapel pins. People were free to participate or not-and most were grateful for the spiritual support as they went about a grueling and emotional task. That old saying is true: there really are no atheists in foxholes.
Another memorable postbomb incident came as a security officer stood on duty one rainy night with the lighted, gutted facade of the Murrah Building looming behind him. Earlier, a local radio station had broadcast yet another call for needed supplies-this time, for steel-toed work boots for the rescuers laboring to retrieve the dead. The officer watched as an old car pulled up to his post. The driver, a man wearing rough denim, rolled down the window and handed over a pair of the requested boots. As he drove away, the guard noticed that the boots were warm. He glanced into the car-the man was barefoot.
Timothy McVeigh, and those who believe he is somehow emblematic of a national sickness, are wrong. A nation where a man will give you the shoes off his feet to help people he doesn’t even know has nothing to fear from petty divisions and transient disagreements. When McVeigh takes his final breath in that Indiana prison on Monday, he needs to hear this message from Oklahoma, and from America: You failed. We are far, far better than you ever dreamed.
