June 11, 2001

Time to Pay the Piper

I remember the day fairly well. It was a warm, sunny day in Hawai'i -- kinda like it is most days there.

I was loitering, smoking at the bottom of the stairs from the entrance to the tunnel...a quarter-mile access tunnel to the underground building at Kunia Field Station.

"Did you hear about the bomb in Oklahoma City?" was posed by someone...could've been anyone, really.

It was about 9:30 a.m. in Hawai'i when I heard the question...a good five-and-a-half hours after the blast. Oklahoma City... It didn't take me long to think of one of my coworkers from Oklahoma City.

Advance two hours I find out that this man who I went to 'A' school with and this man who I served a tour in the Philippines with lost his mother that morning.

We wept for our friend and for the families of 167 others.

- Rich