Clinton Honors Victims of Oklahoma Bombing

During a day filled with personal sorrow, public grief and religious reflection, President Clinton remembered the victims and survivors of the federal building bombing here nearly a year ago, offering comfort in a Good Friday celebration of rebirth and resurrection.

Aided by First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton and six children who lived through the deadly blast, Clinton arranged a huge wreath of seasonal flowers in the barren field where the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building once stood. The massive structure was destroyed April 19, 1995, when a truck bomb exploded, killing 168 people, including 19 children at a second-floor day-care center.

The president walked behind Marine Capt. Matthew Cooper and Army Sgt. 1st Class Harold Davenport, who carried the spring arrangement of 168 flowers to the site. Both Cooper and Davenport had been in their offices in the Murrah building when the bomb exploded.

As a mournful bagpipe rendition of “Amazing Grace” reverberated in the chilly, gray sky, several family members of the bombing victims looked on teary-eyed as Mrs. Clinton held the hand of 4-year-old Brandon Denny, who survived the explosion, and bent down to leave a teddy bear in the center of the wreath. Each of the children then placed a single, red rose in the wreath--except for 2-year-old Joseph Webber, who refused to let go of his rose.

“I know there is nothing that anyone can do to bring back the children whose lives were taken from us, nothing we can do to sweep away the frightening memories that still linger in the children who survived,” Clinton said later in brief remarks at the dedication of a plaque for a new child-care center. “But what you have done is show our children that in the wake of evil, goodness can surround them and lift them up.”

In a reference to the death of Commerce Secretary Ronald H. Brown and 34 others in Wednesday’s military plane crash in Croatia, the president said that it was a “very difficult and painful day” for him.

But, drawing on this weekend’s Easter holiday and its themes of hope and resurrection, Clinton said that faith in inexplicable acts of good allows mortals to endure even the most painful tragedies.

“The miracles of Jesus and the miracles of the human spirit in Oklahoma City only reflect the larger miracle of human nature,” said Clinton, who often cites the Bible and his Baptist faith in speeches. “There is something eternal within each of us. We all have to die, and no bomb can blow away--even from the littlest child--that eternity which is within each of us.”

And, he added: “This is, after all, Good Friday. It is a day for those of us who are Christians that marks the progress from hope and despair to hope and redemption.”

After his speech, the president and Mrs. Clinton spent an hour and a half shaking hands and speaking with the hundreds of people in the audience.

In a separate proclamation, Clinton declared April 19 a national day of remembrance and requested that Americans observe a moment of silence at 9:02 a.m. CDT that day to mark the moment of the Oklahoma City explosion.

Later in the day, Clinton spoke at the University of Central Oklahoma.

The trial of the two suspects in the bombing, Timothy J. McVeigh and Terry L. Nichols, was transferred to Denver because a judge ruled the two men were unlikely to receive a fair trial in Oklahoma. A hearing has been set for May 1 on the suspects’ challenge to the government’s attempts to seek the death penalty. No trial date has been set in the case.