Friday, April 19, 2024
Tragedy shapes generations
Rubble to racing
Courtesy of The Jonsteen Company
Remembering the lost Kennedy Thomason News & Lifestyle Editor
The last time Dr. Lee Denney talked to Dr. Margaret “Peggy” Clark, Clark was sewing her daughter’s prom dress. Denney, one of Clark’s best friends, called to wish Clark a happy 42nd birthday, 13 days before a bomb blew the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building apart. On April 19, 1995, a bomb was left in a parked car in front of the Oklahoma City building. At 9:02 a.m., it exploded, taking many of the building’s floors with it. Clark was one of the 168 lives lost that day. A graduate of OSU’s Veterinary Medicine program, Clark was working as a USDA veterinary medical officer at the time of her death. Denney didn’t realize Clark was in the building until hours after the bomb exploded. “I immediately called her and got her voicemail at her home in Chickasha and said, ‘Well, where were you today? Let me know,’” Denney said. “Wish I had never done that, but I did.” Clark’s daughter, Dr. Rosslyn Biggs, was in Lawton, where she had finished an FFA judging competition that morning. After reports of the bombings started flowing in, Biggs’ teachers shuffled the kids back onto buses headed to Chickasha.
6 OSU alumni lost their lives on April 19, 1995:
There, Biggs regrouped with her family at her aunt’s house. Biggs’ father went back and forth to hospitals in the city, trying to find his wife. Eventually, the family waited and watched as body after body was discovered. While they waited to hear news, Biggs, who was 15 at the time, went back to school and participated in FFA state judging contests. “He (Biggs’ father) sat my sisters and I down, I don’t know, probably after a couple of days, and said, ‘You know, we don’t know what the situation is going to be, but it’s going to change us, whatever comes.” Clark was one of the last to be discovered. “After three or four days, we knew that, then asked for the dental records from her dentist, and then there was a really great chance she had not survived,” Denney said. “And that was horrific.” Despite losing a mother and a wife, Biggs said her father made every effort to keep life as “normal” as possible after the bombing. He, with support from family, friends and church members, shuffled the girls around to school and their extra curricular activities. Biggs and her sisters showed livestock, played sports and participated in band. Biggs said the Oklahoma Standard shone through in everyone who helped her family.
Ann Kreymborg, ‘59, Oklahoma City John Van Ess III, ‘49, Chickasha Margaret “Peggy” Clark, ‘76, ‘78, Chickasha Michael L. Loudenslager, ‘69, Harrah
Valerie Koelsch, ‘84, Oklahoma City William Steven Williams, ‘75, Cashion
See Racing on 8A
Legacy of OKC bombing lives with family Luisa Clausen Editor-in-Chief Frank was sitting next to his mother’s hospital bed when he felt the floor beneath him shake. He didn’t know it yet, but on April 19, 1995, a bomb had been left in a parked car in front of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, 10 blocks from where he was. Frank, an OSU alumnus who didn’t want to be identified by his last name, left his mom’s room searching for answers. In his mind, equipment exploded in the hospital’s basement. In reality, the daycare where his daughter worked had turned into ashes. The possibilities became unbearable, and Frank lost consciousness. The nurses at the hospital assisted him, and after he recovered, Frank reached out to his wife, Hattie, to tell her he was OK and ask if she had heard from their daughter, Sherie. She hadn’t. Hattie drove to Sherie’s house, but no one was home. Without cell phones for quicker communication, she decided to drive to the scene, where hundreds of first responders tried to rescue people, and worried families gathered in despair. “At that moment, I just gave up all hope of it ever being OK,” Hattie said. “I knew the area of the building they would be in, and it was gone. It was no longer there.” In the midst of confu-
sion and disbelief, Hattie went home. That’s when she got the call. Their daughter, Sherie, didn’t go to work that day because her eight-month-old daughter, Hannah Munier, woke up sick. “You can imagine the anger I felt toward the bombers and the relief I felt when I found out our baby girl and her daughter were not there,” Frank said. On the morning of the bombing, one of Sherie’s coworkers called her and asked her to come in. Sherie missed the call because she was taking care of her baby. When she heard the news, Sherie immediately drove to the scene. Her coworkers and the babies she watched every day were there. She had to help. What Frank’s daughter saw changed her forever. Sherie tried to cope with the traumatic events, but the memories and the guilt of not going to work led her to develop PTSD and eventually an alcohol and drug addiction. “The next time I saw her (after the bombing), she was not the same,” Hattie said. “She was not the same girl.” Her parents watched her go to counseling sessions or get involved with church. They constantly told her it was not her fault she didn’t go to work that day. “Sometimes those things don’t heal,” Frank said. “People around Oklahoma City were and still are affected by it. It’s kind of like dropping a pebble in a pool of water and the ripples go out until they hit the shore. ” See Legacy on 8A
OSU settles free speech lawsuit, disbands bias response team Mallory Pool O’Colly Contributor
ple with the fact that its policies violate their students’ rights,” Cherise Trump, Speech First’s executive director said in a statement Tuesday. “I hope universities learn OSU disbanded its bias from OSU’s experience that response team and has already revised its harassment policy in there is a high cost to violating a lawsuit by Speech First settled students’ constitutional rights,” Trump said. Monday. OSU also agreed to pay OSU changed its email pol$18,000 for Speech First’s legal icy for students in June as part of a separate agreement with the fees. A federal trial judge in free speech advocacy group. In Oklahoma City had dismissed a lawsuit filed in January 2023, Speech First said the three poli- the lawsuit in April 2023 beKaytlyn Hayes cies chilled First Amendment cause Speech First had used anonymous plaintiffs. A federal OSU settled a lawsuit with Speech First, a free speech advocacy rights of students. The university must “grap- appellate court overturned that group, on Monday. The university has agreed to review its harassdecision in early February. ment policy and disband the bias response team as a result.
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OSU said it is “committed to protecting, promoting and facilitating free expression for all students, regardless of their views.” “OSU embraces its role as a marketplace of ideas, and we believe a robust public discourse is a positive contribution to the process of addressing society’s most pressing challenges, which is our charge as a land-grant institution,” the university said in a statement. Speech First said OSU was forced to settle the lawsuit “or face an embarrassing loss in court.”
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