Memories of the Oklahoma City Bombing may be fifteen years old. But for survivors, they’re still very clear. And every spring, the trees are blooming, but it is a difficult time for employees of a credit union, who lost 18 of their co-workers in the Murrah Building that day.They remember their friends every day, but this year, they’re paying a special tribute.
"I just remember waking up and thinking that I had been in a terrible car accident and that somebody had to find me. I could hear things, and what I thought I heard was like a busted radiator, what it was-- was just water running through the pipes of that building. I thought it must be a dream, I'll just go to sleep and it will be okay."
A concussion clouded Terri Talley’s memories of April 19, 1995.
"I can remember trying to scream, and it was like I couldn't get enough in me to scream," says Terri.
She worked at the Federal Employees Credit Union, housed in the Murrah Building. 18 of her co-workers died in the bombing. She was one of the lucky ones. She fell, while still in her office chair.
"I just remember somebody coming along and saying something to me, we're here to help. They said they couldn't figure out how my body was in there and they just pulled."
Temporarily blinded by debris, she couldn't even see her rescuers.
"I had a concussion, first vertebrae in my neck was cracked, and part of my foot was gone, when they pulled me out it kind of pulled off part of my foot," recalls Terri.
Weeks in a wheelchair. Now, something incredible.
“'Did you ever think you'd run in a marathon after that?' ‘No, never are you kidding?’ No!’”
Terri, and other co-workers who survived, are training for the Oklahoma City Memorial Marathon on April 25. They'll run the half marathon, more than 13 miles in memory of the friends they lost.
"I was on board because I had been thinking about it anyway, I really wanted to be on that other side."
Terri will also run for her rescuers; men she keeps in touch with: a former firefighter who jumped in to help, and an ambulance driver.
"The ambulance driver, he had a really hard time after it, and his co-workers said, you've got to find her because he was having such a hard time, because I was the only one that lived that he helped that day, and we've stayed close ever since then."
She says, every spring is difficult, even after 15 years.
"You just forgive yourself for being a little grouchy right now," says Terri.
She and her co-workers have a new building outside downtown, and a new name, Allegiance Credit Union. But a fountain and garden, are daily reminders of a day Oklahoma will never forget.
"You can't forget it, it will always be a part of you. There are scars left to remind us every day that that was, that we were a part of that. It’s in you, it just always is, it's just a part of you."
