One team mate was on vacation and another team that covers outlying areas of the state needed some help and one of my other team mates had planned to drive the 70 miles to look at a problem machine. Because of this we had decided just not to have a team meeting and we'd just get on with the many duties of making sure our customers were printing and getting their work out.

It is about a 40 mile drive for me each day and it gives me much quiet time to pray and talk with the Lord. As I got onto Interstate 40 for that long drive, an uneasiness settled into my spirit. Just a general sense that something was not quite right in the world. Not a big deal, but disturbing none the less. We use Nextel Radio/Telephones to we can keep in very close communication while we all work in different locations. With all my team mates being Christians, I just asked them if they were having a good morning. They replied well, especially the one that was taking the day off to be with his family (we did that often).

OK, must just be me so I drive on..... still not quite right with the world. I'm on my way to check a machine design change in down town Oklahoma City, and then to do some preventative maintenance a half block down the street at GSA which has a nice parking lot, but the only place we can park was in a service spot that always opens up as one of their night shift employees gets off work at 9:00 am. It's a really pretty day and my allergies are starting to act up as they always do mid April.

About 7:30 as I was praying and thanking the Lord for such a beautiful day, my uneasy feeling changed into a completely distressing overshadowing that almost frightened me. I called Dwight and told him that I had a very uneasy feeling that our plans for the day were not in our best interests. Thinking that with Lonnie off today and he out of town looking into that problem machine for the others that we might not be able to handle things well.

 I can't go into the next fifteen minutes in detail for they ended up kind of being a blur, but I can say that by the time I talked Dwight into not going to Stillwater until Lonnie got back I was completely and totally terrified. It was as if some dire disaster was hanging over my head and I couldn't even think. Finally he agreed to stay in the city and we went to our usual place for our weekly team meeting.' My terror feeling had gone away, but I still felt something very wrong.

At 9:02 there was a very loud double boom and something sucked all the ceiling tiles up from their frames and they fell all over us. Our meeting place was about a mile from the North end of the main runway of Will Rogers World Airport and I just knew that a plane had crashed into our building for my chair was lifted off the floor about an inch and as everything settled we all three were just waiting for the fireball to engulf us and that would be that.

Well, long story short, the fireball never came. We went outside to see what was going on and the only thing we could see was a large column of smoke coming from the North part of downtown almost 5 miles away. As we turned on the TV to see if we could find what had made such a loud noise and shock wave, we learned of the disaster at the Federal Building..... I got so shaky I could not stand up. My God had kept me from almost certain death. This is where I had scheduled to be at 9:00 to 9:05 on the morning of April 19, 1995.

 This is what it looked like the second day.

A hundred and sixty eight people died that morning (19 were very small kids).

After I got through thanking God for keeping me away from almost certain death, I can not help but ask why me. It wasn't just luck that kept me from that place; why me and none of those little kids.