Relief Agencies Swamped by Contributions

When a bomb pulverized the federal building just a few blocks from the branch office of Southwestern Bell, the company quickly offered the building as a rescue command post.

Within a couple of days, however, the company decided that wasn’t good enough. It followed up with a $1-million donation. In Silicon Valley, a financial analyst pledged his entire $53,000 salary to a college fund for the children who lost parents in the blast.

New York financier Henry Kravis kicked in $200,000. And a seamstress from Oklahoma City prepared to sew burial clothes for any of the preschool victims who needed them.

Large and small, grand and homey, contributions to those stricken by the worst terrorist attack in American history have flowed into this city at an unprecedented rate. Local relief agencies have been scrambling to keep up with the calls and checks. The American Red Cross has already received more than it can spend here.

*

For a number of reasons, Americans have responded differently to this calamity than to the others that periodically bring vivid images of death and suffering to their living room television screens.

The riveting pictures of bleeding children from the building’s day care center made an impact. But more significant, perhaps, was the source of the horror.

“This was not an act of God, this was an act of man, and good people are sick at heart that this was done by the forces of evil,” said Salvation Army Capt. Will Cundiff, a veteran of numerous natural disasters in the South and Midwest. “People want to show that they can right the wrong.”

June Reins, a Red Cross worker in Guthrie, Okla., said the national effort was probably boosted by the spectacle of the huge effort by Oklahomans themselves. “People like to help people who are trying to help themselves,” Reins said. So people pitched in, almost in more ways than anyone could imagine.

On Friday, as the number of bodies recovered rose to 118, with seven more located but not yet removed, people from around the country continued to come forward, almost begging to be allowed to help.

Donations to the American Red Cross topped $5 million nationwide within five days of the tragedy before givers were directed elsewhere. Representatives from several major disaster relief organizations agreed that the responses to recent hurricanes, fires, floods and earthquakes were generous, but nothing quite like this.

“Sometimes Oklahoma thinks the nation looks down on it,” said one stunned local volunteer, Jim Arthur. “Now we know that’s not true.”

Thom Hunter, spokesman for Southwestern Bell, said that his company felt it had to do something that would make both a real difference and send a strong message. “. . . It’s important to show that there is still more right in the world than bad. These contributions are meant to show that good can triumph over evil.”

*

Carol Miller, spokesman for the American Red Cross, said the fact that this disaster was man-made also helped increase cooperation among various public and private agencies, as well as increased public giving.

“We have some bad floods where no one gives,” Miller added.

Barney Lehmbeck, senior vice president at Liberty Bank & Trust Co. in Oklahoma City, which is handling the relief fund established by Gov. Frank Keating, said that Americans seem to view the bombing as something that struck directly at them, even those who live thousands of miles away. “It just happened to happen in Oklahoma,” Lehmbeck said.

Other examples of generosity:

* In Guthrie, a church group found a new home and raised enough money for six months’ rent for six members of a local family, ages 22 to 6, whose parents were both killed in the blast. The six were on the verge of being evicted by a landlord who refused to reconsider in view of their plight.

* A painter from Philadelphia has offered to paint a portrait from a photograph of any child killed in the blast.

* A children’s clothing firm in New York has established a trust fund to pay living expenses to adulthood for children who suffer lasting losses from the blast.

* Coast Kids Theatre, a drama group composed of students from elementary and high schools in northern San Diego County, staged a benefit performance of their latest production, Andrew Lloyd Webber’s “Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat,” and sent the proceeds to the relief effort.

* Sierra Vista Elementary School in Upland put out a coffee can and collected $909 over the past week.