Lazy W Marie

Carpeing all the diems in semi-rural Oklahoma...xoxo

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Harvey’s Story, part 1

 The 19th anniversary of the Oklahoma City Murrah Building bombing is fast approaching.
Handsome’s parents Harvey and Judy Wreath were both first responders to this tragedy,
and over these past several days Harvey has been gracious to sit and discuss with me
more of his memories and details from those weeks, many of which I had never heard before.
He also visited the Memorial Museum with Handsome and me,
which was a such a memorable experience.
Internalizing all of this history has made me want to run the marathon even more.

Following is the first in a series of three installments telling his and Judy’s story.

Harvey Wreath 1995
Harvey Wreath 1995

A DAY LIKE ANY OTHER

Early on the morning of April 19, 1995, Harvey was already hard at work at his auto body shop in Moore, about half an hour south of downtown Oklahoma City. The weather was calm and warm, the skies bright. Absorbed in repairing the fender, door, and front bumper of a Chevrolet pick up, Harvey heard an unbelievable boom then felt heavy vibrations. He knew immediately it was a significant explosion and wondered if it could be an oil tank. He stepped outside and saw dark, heavy smoke gulping into the blue Oklahoma sky.

Several minutes later, at 9:15 a.m., Harvey’s police receiver reported a large explosion at the Murrah Building in downtown Oklahoma City. The operator was requesting all officers for help. They were bracing for the possibility of something more. No one seemed to know what was happening.

At this time, in addition to running his auto body shop, Harvey was Police Chief of the town of Hallpark, Oklahoma. His wife Judy was his right arm in every part of life and also served as his police Sergeant. On duty that April morning, Judy heard the same radio calls for help and immediately brought her husband his police uniform. Together they drove in their township’s only patrol car north to Oklahoma City. They prayed together every mile of that drive and in minutes arrived at the gaping, shredded building now veiled in angry black smoke.

CHAOS & FIRST RESPONDERS, DAY ONE

By now Harvey knew it was something far worse than any gas explosion. Upon seeing the enormous wound on the front of the familiar building, he knew without a doubt that it had been a bomb. Harvey and Judy heard layers of horrified screams. They knew people were still trapped. The scene was absolute chaos.

On the north side of the block, Harvey and Judy found a gathering of police cars and, in uniform themselves, rushed to offer their help. Their first task was to keep people away from the building, but crowd control on this morning was far from easy. The people trying to get through the barrier were not yet spectators or tabloid photographers; they were downtown office workers searching for colleagues, friends, and spouses. They were parents and grandparents frantic to lay trembling hands on their babies who had just been dropped off at daycare in the building now laid to waste. Their job of crowd control was made increasingly difficult by the thick, gagging smoke and then by subsequent bomb scares. There was so much screaming.

By evening, the area at Sixth Street was crawling with military personnel, law enforcement, and scores of heavy equipment operators. Martial Law had been enacted but so far was a formality because everyone was already working together. Somewhere deep in the belly of this horrible scene, this fallout of evil not yet understood, a seed of hope was already germinating. Oklahoma was already responding to trauma with intense love and unflinching willingness to reach out, to work together.

True to form for springtime in Oklahoma, heavy thunderstorms rolled in around 8:30 p.m. The weather did not slow the rescue efforts. By 10:40 p.m. every survivor had been brought out of the cruel debris.

Harvey and Judy stayed on site until 9 p.m. that first night then drove home, stunned and exhausted. They had planned to return to the same job the next morning, but at 11 p.m. a phone call came from their friends at the Medical Examiner’s Office. Harvey and Judy were being asked to join a team of people to work in the temporary morgue. Additionally, Harvey was needed as head of Security for the team. They said yes without hesitation, just as they had done fourteen hours earlier.

Neither of them slept well that night. They rose the next morning at 7 a.m. and reported for sixteen hours of unprecedented work and sacrifice, the first of nineteen consecutive days that would change them forever.

 

Thank you for reading!
Harvey appreciates you reading, too,
and gaining a deeper understanding
of what Oklahoma experienced that April.
Please continue to check in for more installments.
XOXOXO

Friday 5 at the Farm: Accidental Collecting

You guys. I have some pretty serious posts in draft, being edited by my ten-four-good-buddy M and polished by Love because it is sensitive material.

But today is also Friday. Handsome and I have worked ourselves down to the marrow this week and have one more day of such exertion on the books before launching a drop-dead gorgeous Oklahoma weekend and some equally intense romancing.

So before those serious posts come your way, how about a quick Friday 5? Here are five accidental collections we have made at the farm.

  1. Rust old milk cans
  2. Heavy cotton, mid-century tablecloths
  3. Books
  4. Lawn furniture that does not match but is awesome
  5. Llamas

 

rom diddly

llama romance

skinny dulcie

llamas guarding honey

 

And you know what else? I have a feeling we will soon be adding a fourth. Place your bets here. Again. Just like last spring.

What have you accidentally collected?

Work hard today, friends. And please have yourself an amazing weekend! Tune in soon for stories from my father in law about the Oklahoma City Bombing, the reason behind running the marathon.

“Well done is better than well said.”
~Benjamin Franklin
XOXOXOXO

Red Bud Season

There’s a paved road near our farm where the red bud trees stand tall on both sides, intermingling with live oaks, maples, sand plums, and cedars. They are all so old and strong that they interlace their branches over the road almost enough to form a true canopy. The red buds are blooming right now, that shade of purplish pink that is all at once both hot and cool. If you are lucky enough to drive this road early in the morning, then you get to see the eastern sunlight slicing through those flowering branches in great, shimmering planes of color. Everything is washed pastel for a while, even the asphalt, and it is all so beautiful you can almost forget about thickening traffic patterns and urban sprawl. This beauty is intense, and it is equally fleeting. Soon the tissue explosions will give way to green leaves, a new season of beauty in its own right.

 

Oklahoma state tree, the red bud.
Oklahoma state tree, the red bud.

 

No matter how many plans I make, they seem to change; and the new plans tend to be even better than what I had in mind. No matter how much I celebrate the details and beauty of life, I am constantly surprised by how good life can be. Nearly every day something has been happening here to prove to me that not only are things “for the best;” but they are amazing. Brief seasons of beauty surprise us, nourish us, then bow out gracefully for the next act.

Early yesterday morning, after driving through the pastel tunnel near our farm,  I had the chance to see my youngest daughter twirl around and squeal tenderly, celebrating her plans for prom this weekend. I got to see the glow in her young cheeks and the sparkle in her pretty brown eyes, and I got to feel the simplicity and warmth of her hugs. She is as much a young woman now as she has ever been my little girl, and it is the most amazing feeling to see this transformation. I am so thankful for it.

Later in the day I went downtown with Handsome and his sweet Dad to visit the Oklahoma City Memorial Museum. I had never been in all these years, and visiting with these men who are so special to me was an unforgettable experience. I had been scraping hard lately to maintain my attitude for the upcoming marathon, and yesterday changed everything. After internalizing what the first responders endured, I now want to run this race more than ever. If they can to do that work for nineteen days straight, then I can certainly run for four hours to honor them.

After that I bought our groceries for the week and was thankful all over again that we are able to eat so well. I felt deeply grateful for our health, too. The farm was happy and silly when Handsome and I both got home in the afternoon, and we enjoyed the baby chicks for a long time. I cooked dinner and shrugged off little projects I thought were so important, instead spending the evening with my husband, my best friend. I had horrible nightmares overnight, but he woke me up and held me close.

I don’t know what I’m trying to say here except that Love drenched every minute of yesterday, just as it does every day if we will only notice. The red buds are blooming and life is good.

 

XOXOXOXO

 

 

 

 

Marathon Monday: Why This Race?

It’s Marathon Monday again, but instead of talking about mileage and recipes, I’d like to tell you what race I’m running soon and why.

In nineteen days, thousands of people will gather in downtown Oklahoma City to run different events for the Oklahoma City Memorial Marathon. People run for so many private reasons, but everyone runs this race both to remember history and to keep hope alive.

race logo

History

On April 19, 1995, the physical and emotional landscape of Oklahoma changed forever. A building was bombed; 168 innocent lives were lost and 680 more people were injured; and the lives of thousands of workers and first responders  were changed forever. History was altered with the worst act of domestic terrorism yet in our country and ever in our state. 

Everyone here has a story about that day. Where we were when it happened or when we heard the news. Who we knew that might have been downtown that day. Who was hurt. Who was lost. Even if you lived outside of Oklahoma at that time, you probably have details of that day seared into your memory. The images are indelible. Every single one of our stories is worth telling and remembering, and I hope you find ways to keep yours alive.

I was barely 21 years old, still living at home with my sweet parents and four younger siblings. We lived just a few miles north of downtown. I was just a few months pregnant with my first baby. When the bomb exploded I was leaning against the outside brick of my childhood home, feeding the dogs. The house shook. It shook hard, and the boom was unlike anything I’d ever heard. I remember feeling it in my ears and wondering what it could possibly be. The dogs were upset, but the morning was bright and warm and I was on a schedule. I drove on to my bank job which was even closer to downtown, and soon the reports started pouring in. The glass panes of the bank’s drive-through teller windows had shattered. The phone lines were down (remember that cell phones were rare then). No one knew exactly what had happened, but we all knew it was horrible. The sounds of emergency vehicles were a constant the rest of the day. We continued our work,  sort of on auto pilot, sifting through scant news reports as we could. I didn’t know it yet, but my future parents in law were driving into the thick smoke ready to do anything that was needed.

My story pales quickly. All of my loved ones were safe. I was horrified but preserved. My story gradually braided into Oklahoma’s story, and over time we all became steeped in appreciation for the people who carried us from those shadows of evil to the brighter, calmer days of hope.

Hope

The story of hope and how it has flowered out of so much evil is a long one, and it could be told from thousands of different perspectives. Most people agree that Oklahoma showed her true colors in those weeks and in the years since, that we rose to the occasion and allowed light to drive our darkness as much as possible.

Of all the beautiful ways to tell the story of hope, I am honored to have the chance to tell it from the perspective of my father in law, Harvey Wreath. He and my mother in law, Judy, were both law enforcement officers at the time. Immediately after the bombing, they were summoned to help, and they did. They never flinched; they just went. And their lives were never the same after that.

 

This is one of the fences surrounding the bombing memorial. On race weekend, runners add their bibs to the letters, stuffed animals, flags, and flowers.
This is one of the fences surrounding the bombing memorial. On race weekend, runners add their bibs to the letters, stuffed animals, flags, and flowers.

 

Over the years I have heard lots of stories from Handsome’s parents about the weeks they worked at the bombing site and about their changed years since. The view into their servants’ hearts has lent me a deep respect for these people who also happened to raise an incredible husband for me. Recently, though, Harvey agreed to sit quietly and talk with me at length about his experience as a first responder to the bombing. We plan to talk more as well as visit the Memorial Museum together. The fruit of this intimate labor has been wonderful. I hope you’ll stay tuned for his interviews, stories, and photos.

I am definitely running this race for them.

 

Until Next Week

While Harvey and I continue to delve into memory and meaning, you are invited to share your own story here. Whether you are from Oklahoma or somewhere else in this beautiful world, your story is important. Where were you? What were you doing? How did you hear the awful news that spring day nineteen years ago? Would you like to memorialize anyone?  Do you have any questions?

Then in the coming couple of weeks, please check back here to read Harvey’s story and get a dose of Oklahoma pride and love for our first responders.

 

Thanks for visiting, friends. 
Be gentle with each other and remember that
only light drives out darkness.
XOXOXOXO

Friday 5 at the Farm: Bring on the Weekend!

Do you know that feeling where you have a busy day starting any second now, and perhaps you are budgeting your minutes so carefully, and then all of a sudden you realize you don’t have to wash your hair? That is is clean and straight enough and maybe doesn’t even need to be brushed before this day gets going? I know. I love that feeling! Especially when it happens on a Friday. In fact, that feeling is why I have time to jam out this little blog post before my awesome day gets started.

 

 

Friday 5 at the Farm: Bring on the Weekend!

  • Today I am subbing at my favorite local school. And it’s jeans day. And my jeans are clean. And they fit my hips straight out of the hot dryer. BAM. Three cheers for running and not eating bread after lunchtime!
  • Tonight our world famous Oklahoma book club meets to discuss White Oleander. I love book club no matter what we’ve read, but tonight is special because we are gathering at the farm (I adore filling our rooms with these girls); we all have a lot going on in life right now and the hugs are vital; and we are discussing a book that no one else seemed to like much. I am one of only two people both locally and on Goodreads who have given it 5 enthusiastic stars, and I really can’t wait to find out why. Plus, I have a couple of games planned. *wink*

white oleander table setting 1

  • This weekend I have a 20 mile run planned. After one more next week,  maybe 20 and maybe 15, I will be tapering for the marathon. Excited? So much. Ask Handsome and our sweet friend Marci. They have put up with my running-blabber-mouthing the most.
  • We may or may not have a top secret overnight guest coming to the farm this weekend. If I told you who, I’d have to kill you. Not really, but go ahead and be jealous. And? The Apartment is already clean, fresh sheets and empty drawers and a shiny sink and everything. My messy sewing table doesn’t count, okay mystery guest? Obviously.
  • The gardens are doing so great you guys! The fruit trees and shrubs, the perennials and flowering bulbs, the herbs, the earliest veggies… Everything is thriving happily in these warm days and cool nights. The compost is even gorgeous. It’s almost too easy this year.

 

So that is a boiled down list of why I am so excited for Friday! Even more joy and reward is simmering beneath the surface. What beautiful things are happening in your neck of the woods? Why are you doing cartwheels and screaming TGIF?

 

“Who, being loved, is poor?”

~Oscar Wilde

XOXOXOXO