Blast Anniversary: the Healing Continues

Thursday’s morning mail to Fire Battalion Chief Chuck Nicola brought the same thing it has for the past year: another letter with an Oklahoma postmark.

The handwritten message read simply: “We have not forgotten you or your dedication and caring in our time of need. The John Taylor family, Oklahoma City.”

Nicola, 48, was one of scores of Orange County professionals who rushed to the aid of Oklahoma City after America’s deadliest act of terrorism, which occurred one year ago today.

“I never even met the guy,” said Nicola, a leader of the Orange County Fire Authority’s urban search and rescue team, which dug through the bombed-out Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building for six days last year. “It’s so heartwarming to think people still think of you.”

A handful of Orange County’s elite 62-member team flew to Oklahoma City on Thursday to attend special ceremonies in the field where the federal building once stood. The team members will join the city in observing 168 seconds of silence, followed by a recitation of the names of the 168 victims, at 7:02 a.m. PDT.

“We are going back to keep a promise,” Capt. Glen Sekins said. “We told the people there we’d come back and meet in happier times.”

But Dr. Audrey Konow, a rescue team physician who helped remove 68 bodies from the rubble, said that she expects a deep sadness at the reunions. Konow said she will be watching for a man in his 30s with a face she will never forget.

“He came up to me from nowhere, really, and hugged me real tight and had a tear in his eye,” recalled Konow, an emergency room physician. “He told me that the day before our team had pulled out his mother and now they could give her a burial.”

Team members also realize that the trip will rekindle their own unresolved feelings about the bombing. Members said they were either so busy working or so exhausted from their 12-hour shifts in treacherous working conditions that they had little time to emotionally process the traumatic events.

“I think Oklahoma City is going to have a much bigger impact on us the second time around,” Konow said. “We didn’t have time to reflect before, but now we are going with no agenda.”

“All you remember is the image of that building, which never stops haunting you,” she added. “To see downtown now, as a place where people live and work--it will be something.”

Judy Tuohey of Laguna Hills said she also felt compelled to return to Oklahoma City, where she served as a mental health nurse for the American Red Cross. Tuohey counseled rescue workers and families of the dead.

Tuohey will present Oklahoma legislators with a poster signed by Laguna Hills High School students expressing the community’s condolences.

“It’s going to be very emotional,” said Tuohey, 59. “But I think that will be healthy, because it will help us with closure. I think we need that.”

But those, like Nicola, who remain in Orange County are no less moved by the grim anniversary. A year removed from the event, he has been able to find some solace.

“We saw one of the worst things that men can do to one another,” said Nicola. “But we also saw the best of mankind and what America has to offer. As tragic as it was, it restored a lot of faith around here that we are not as jaded and cold as we might think.”

But all wounds have not healed. For Irving Himelblau, who worked with bomb victim Peter Avillanoza at the U.S. Housing and Urban Development offices in Orange, the year has brought frustration and anger.

“It was senseless then, and it remains just as senseless now,” said Himelblau, who said that he will watch the memorial services on television today and that “people in the office who knew Peter will share a few words with each other.”

A former housing investigator in Orange County, the 56-year-old Avillanoza had been promoted to director of HUD in Oklahoma City shortly before the bombing. His body was found in the rubble about 10 days after the blast.

The bombing was equally bewildering for some of Orange County’s Vietnamese community, which relived a bit of their native country’s bitter history last year.

“It brought back bad memories, but in my country, the bombs came every day, so we got used to it,” said Khoi Vu, publisher of the Vietnamese-language magazine Ngay Mai (Tomorrow) in Westminster. “I didn’t think it would happen in America, so this was more shocking.”

Three weeks after the blast, Vu flew to Oklahoma City to give the American Red Cross a check for $2,500 and visit a young Vietnamese boy in the federal building day-care center who had escaped the blast with minor injuries.

“I feel like we had a responsibility to help,” said Vu, whose readers contributed to the amount. “We’re all Americans.”