BY MICKEY EDWARDS
first published on Atlantic.com
Fifteen years have passed since Timothy McVeigh’s bomb ripped the heart out of my hometown. Fifteen years since people I knew had their lives cut short by violence planned and executed here in our land by one of our neighbors. This is one pain that does not diminish over time.
I had represented Oklahoma City in Congress for 16 years. On the day Timothy McVeigh’s bomb exploded outside a courthouse named for a federal judge I had known, I was far from my home, teaching at Harvard. I was about to enter a classroom for a 10 o’clock class when I learned of what had happened. The news was numbing. Not only was this my home, these people were my friends; my daughter still lived there, my grandchildren lived there. What was happening? Who had done this? Who was safe?