- Robert F. Kennedy

I’ve always loved this quote. Some say Kennedy actually spun this off of a similar thought by George Bernard Shaw. All I know is when I first heard it, I was told these words were spoken by Kennedy, and they immediately captured my world view.

I apologize for not blogging much the past couple of weeks, Sometimes, quite honestly, I go through a bit of writers’ block. And in the past few months it’s been a rather nasty recurring cerebral virus for me. Back in the early part of my career, I was The Oklahoman’s police reporter. I covered fires, murders, crime sprees and disasters. And I was good at it. I was in the lead covering the April 19, 1995 bombing, I got to the scene way too quickly, and the images I saw that day have haunted me ever since. I was out there day and night, until the last of the rescue workers left, and I couldn’t tolerate one more minute amid the rubble. I went from being a top notch disaster reporter to a person who, to this day, gets physically ill at the sight of such devastation.

My disaster beat days are long behind me.

So on weeks like this, or when terrorists struck in Boston and a fertilizer plant blew up in Texas, it gets to be a bit much for me. I see things as they can be – without hate, without violence, without needless losses of life when twisters sweep through town – and I ask, why not?

And I’m terrified at the prospect that question may never be answered.

Like many of you, I wept while smiling reading Berry Tramel’s story Thursday about “Big Dog” and “Little Dog.” I was nauseated by the bombardment of endless imagery of entire neighborhoods and schools wiped off the face of this planet. We all watch, we all want to help, and yet we know we’re helpless to totally make things right, to fix everything that’s broken.

So we donate money, we lend our talents, our labor, our skill, our know-how and we do what we can. But lives lost can’t be brought back. And some trauma can’t easily be erased.

So that’s that. We’re Oklahomans, those of us born here like Big Dog, and those of us like Little Dog (including me) who were transplants from what  might as well be another country. For there is no place like Oklahoma. Maybe that’s why we’re so misunderstood by those who have not stepped foot on our red soil. There’s something special about this place that makes us cling to these crazy tornado swept Plains. New York Times Magazine writer Sam Anderson began to nail it when he described this state’s birth, our culture, our community as  virtual super-collider of humanity. And Berry, God bless him, he closed this identity crisis once and for all with what may be the great single piece of literature ever to grace the pages of The Oklahoman – the story of Big Dog and Little Dog.

Against such great writers, sometimes I feel like a fraud. I realize I have a long, long way to go before I deserve the time I ask of all of you to read my words, to take it in, and ask yourselves – why not? I promise, I will never give up trying to earn your time.

Thanks for making my words a part of your daily reading. And yes, life will go on, and in the interest of distraction, I’ll even embrace every “mystery tower” question you can throw at me today during this morning’s OKC Central Live Chat.

- Steve

My parents lost their home of 37 years 2 years ago on May 24th in Chickasha. It was the home I was born and raised in, basically a farm house on the outskirts of Chickasha. The rebuilding of the home took less than a year but the rebuilding of their lives is just beginning. My dad is 72 and my mom turns 70 this next week and they are essentially starting over with their lives. They are strong and resilient but it has been tough to say the least.

I did write a first hand experience about seeing the destruction of their home for the first time and realizing that although I knew tornados happened I just never thought they would happen to us.

Church groups, family and friends all came out the next day and begin to help clean up. Very helpful but we weren’t quite ready, my parents were in shock and these groups needed someone to lead them in going through all of my parents things. My dad did the best he could do in leading but he and my mother could not make decisions on the spot. Never been through this before. My siblings and I stepped in but we too were traumatize as well but we did the best we could.

Would have been helpful to have people come out and help lead in clean up, people who have done this type of work before and knew how to do basic clean up and recovery.

Lots of water bottles and food were constantly brought out. This was extremely helpful.

Lots of gloves, masks and trashbags donated. Several people offered up self-storage units to my family to store items recovered from the rubble.

Several flat bed trailers were brought out for us to use to transport the recovered items to storage.
A friend loaned my parents a pick up to drive as all of their cars were destroyed.
Lots of on going support many weeks out, showing up every day to find out if there was anything they could do. There was always something to do.

A local church organized lunches everyday for anyone in that community. They reached out to other local churches to help provide the food. This became the spot for people to gather together and share what they were going through…with each other. And to find out other ways that people could assist each other.

Lots of burying the dead of cows and horse took place. Just read that Orr farms had at least 75 horses killed.

The more I read about this destruction in Moore I think it just must be all hands on deck at this point.

Praying we can all find a way to serve and help in effective ways.

Thanks for what you do.

Ryan

You know the routine: you can hit the NewsOK business page and start posting questions and comments at 9:30 a.m., chat starts at 10 a.m.

Yo, Oklahomies! Bring your appetites and your dancing shoes to the SoundBites concert on Friday, May 10 from 11 a.m. – 1 p.m.  It’s gonna be totally fly, and the best part is… it’s free thanks to SandRidge Energy. (Score!!)

We’ve invited food trucks to park on Robert S. Kerr in front of the Bank of Oklahoma Plaza (between Harvey and Robinson) and they’ll sell their grub during the free concert. Here’s who’s joining us:

• Roxy’s Ice Cream Social
• Smokin’ Okies
• Heo’s Kitchen
• Taste of Soul Egg Roll
• Big Truck Tacos

Come buy yourself some lunch from your favorite truck and bust a move to some 90′s throwback tunes by My So Called Band.

It’s gonna be all that. See you there!

Also, in the interest of promoting bicycle activities in the urban core, I wonder if a velodrome might be a good temporary use of vacant blighted land in Core to Shore. Read about velodromes here: http://www.stltoday.com/news/local/metro/cyclists-try-to-revive-st-louis-venerable-unusual-velodrome/article_fac1c52e-9604-5abf-8919-f67ad1fce0ca.html

Finally, the Cool Cleveland blog has some interesting thoughts about making parking sexy: http://www.coolcleveland.com/blog/2013/04/make-parking-sexy/

Let’s shock the nation tomorrow and everyone in the Peake suddenly start chanting this L-A guy’s ode to OKC @ tipoff!youtube.com/watch?feature=…

— Kelly (@kellyogle) April 24, 2013

KWTV’s Kelly Ogle, a far smarter guy than I, is suggesting that Thunder fans adopt this chant and start using it at tonight’s game against the Houston Rockets. What say you?

And in a related matter….

One of my favorite shots of the 9:03 a.m. gate at the Oklahoma City National Memorial taken by former Oklahoman photo editor Bill Waugh.

I’m not a big believer in marking 9:02 a.m. on this infamous day. What does it represent? The moment a couple of murderers parked a Ryder truck on NW 5 and knowingly killed 168 innocent people all in the name of … nothing. It was mass murder. And an introduction to the tragedies we’re seeing with increasing frequency.
But 9:03 a.m. Now that’s something special. That was the moment we reminded everyone (as very eloquently stated this week by Patton Oswalt), there are far more good people than bad people in this world.
Recovery began at 9:03 a.m. I didn’t see hatred among the survivors that morning. There was love, compassion, and an overwhelming collective effort to start recovery as soon as possible. Race didn’t matter. Religion didn’t matter (at least not at that moment). Socio- and economic classes didn’t matter. Municipal boundaries didn’t matter. We were all in it together.
We’ve seen so many great revival stories downtown. But Automobile Alley will always hold a special place in my heart. Broadway was already a blighted, abandoned stretch of downtown that seemed to be going nowhere fast. But in the aftermath of the bombing, our community regrouped, and declared we weren’t going to let this tragedy stop us in our prior commitment to better ourselves, through beefing up public safety, through the zoo tax, the MAPS initiatives, the renewed emphasis on improving neighborhoods, the self examination of what parts of our city embarrassed us and the discussion on how to address such concerns.
So the bombing tore up what was already a blighted Broadway Avenue. Were we going to simply board back up the windows? Tear it all down?
Heck no. Today, Automobile Alley is a tribute to the community that, at 9:03 a.m. this day, in 1995, drew together and said “We’re not beaten. We’re Oklahomans. And we will come back back better and stronger.”
God bless all of you. I write this with tears in my eyes. I still mourn the senseless loss of 9:02 a.m. And I’ll never forget the recovery that began at 9:03 a.m.