Power Plant Security Guard Finds Fame Amid Mass Murder

I stayed home one Wednesday morning because I was going to be a guinea pig at the Stillwater Medical Center that morning while some nurses were being certified to give PICC lines.  That is, when they insert a catheter in a vein in your arm and thread it all the way up to your heart.  In order to be certified, you had to actually perform this procedure 2 or 3 times on a live vict…. uh…. subject.  My wife Kelly had coaxed me into this position with promises of Chicken Cacciatore.

PICC Catheter

Anyway.  I was able to sleep in that morning.  So, I had just risen from bed a few minutes before 9:00am in time to say goodbye to my daughter Elizabeth, who was on her way to Kindergarten.  Kelly was taking her.  I didn’t have to be ready to go to the hospital until 10:00.

I watched from our front atrium as my wife drove down the gravel driveway to the dirt road and turn right out of sight.  As I walked back to our bedroom to take my shower, I heard and felt a rumble.  To me it sounded like a semi truck had just pulled into our driveway.  This was not too impossible, as our country neighbors would use our drive sometimes if a big truck needed to reach their barn.

I thought I would see what was going on, so I returned to the living room and looked out of the window.  There was no truck.  Then I thought that the rumble felt more like an earthquake than a truck.  I used to live on the main highway through Stillwater (Highway 53, also known as 6th street) before moving out to the country, and I knew the difference between an earthquake and a semi truck.

I returned to bedroom and continued on my way to the shower.  When I was finished, I walked into the bedroom and flipped on the TV.  I thought I would see if there was any news about the earthquake on the news.  Instead, for the next two hours I sat on the edge of the bed glued to the television as tears ran down my face.

At the time that I felt the earthquake, one of the Instrument and Controls Technicians at our Power Plant was talking to someone in our Corporate Headquarters in Oklahoma City.  There was the sound of a large explosion and the person on the other end said there had been an explosion and they had to go, and the phone went dead.  The Corporate Headquarters building is one block south of the Federal Murrah Building.

This was the morning of April 15, 1995.  Tomorrow is the 20th anniversary of the bombing.  I lived about 50 miles as the crow flies from the Federal Murrah Building in Oklahoma City.  At 9:02 a.m. the earthquake I had felt was from the Murrah Building Bombing at the time when 168 people were killed by the blast.

Murrah Building before the bombing in 1995

As I sat watching the events unfold a yellow 1977 Mercury Marquis was driving north on I-35 toward Kansas.  There was one anomaly about this car.  The license plate on the back was not properly attached.  As the car passed exit 186, the driver could see the Charles Machine Works off to the east manufacturing Ditch Witch trenchers in Perry, Oklahoma.

 

Ditch Witch Trencher

A Power Plant Security Guard at our plant, who as his second job (because working at a Power Plant would of course be the first and foremost job), was also a member of the Oklahoma Highway Patrol was on duty that day keeping the public safe.  As he watched the flow of traffic the crooked license plate on the yellow car caught his attention.  As was customary for officer Charlie Hanger, he proceeded to pull the car over.

Oklahoma State Trooper Charlie Hanger

The man that stepped out of the car was Timothy McVeigh, the person that left a truck bomb in a Ryder truck parked in front of the Murrah Building 90 minutes earlier:

Timothy McVeigh

After informing Officer Charlie that he had a weapon in the car, Charlie Hanger arrested him for carrying a concealed weapon.  The rest of that part of the story is history.

 

Timothy McVeigh’s Getaway Car

At the Power Plant, some referred to the Security Guard Charlie Hanger as “Deputy Fife”.

Barney Fife played by Don Knotts in the Andy Griffith Show

It was said that he was the type of law enforcement officer that would arrest his own mother for jaywalking.  What are the odds that Charlie was in the right place at the right time and had decided to pull this one car over?

Charlie Hanger said that the main reason that he pulled over Timothy McVeigh that day was because of Divine Intervention.  God had placed him in the right place at the right time.  This is a common occurence for those who worked at the coal-fired Power Plant in North Central Oklahoma.  God had placed them at the right place at the right time.

If you lived anywhere around Central Oklahoma that day, then you know as well as I, that there was a lot more that went on, than Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols setting off a truck bomb.  For those who watched the story unfold, we remember perfectly well that other unexploded bombs were found as the rescue effort began.  Everyone was pulled off of the site several times while bombs were diffused, and the Whitewater files pertaining to the investigation into Hilary Clinton (which just happened to be stored in the Murrah Building) were quickly removed from the scene.

Oklahomans would tell you that the Conspiracy theory that makes the least sense is that the truck bomb is what brought the Murrah building down.  Survivors that worked in the Murrah building had seen men doing things to the pillars in the parking garage below the building days before.

Aerial view of the Murrah Building after the bombing

If the truck bomb had destroyed that much of one of the most reinforced building in Oklahoma City, then it was the biggest and strangest truck bomb in history.  It was interesting to watch how much effort was put into stopping investigations into the Murrah Building bombing.  Even going so far as having a company from the Main Stream Media buy out KFOR TV station and quickly shut down the Murrah Building Bombing investigation by Jayna Davis.

Anyway…  if you are interested in what I was watching during those first few hours, before the media rewrote the story, watch this documentary.  I encourage you to watch these all the way through:

Here is a video from KFOR News about the Ryder truck bombing:

Here is a video about Jayna Davis’s investigation and Timothy McVeigh’s connection with Al Qaeda:

Another video about the Murrah Building Bombing Conspiracy:

Just about everyone that lived around Oklahoma City at the time of the bombing was affected by the Oklahoma City Bombing.  Here are some of my stories:

When Kelly came home, she told me that she had heard what happened on the radio.  She called the hospital and some of the nurses had headed to Oklahoma City to help out with any medical needs.  The PICC Line certification had been cancelled because the nurses and other medical professionals were all going to go help out.  Kelly went to the hospital to fill in, because they were shorthanded.  I told her that I would pick up Elizabeth from Kindergarten at noon.

After I picked up Elizabeth, I took her to the police station.  We had been planning on going there that day, since I was taking the day off work and she said she would like to see the Police station just to see what it looked like.  So, I figured we would go down there and ask for a tour.

When we arrived at the Stillwater Police Station, the front door was locked.  I thought this was odd because it was the middle of the day.  I could see people inside, so I knocked on the door.  Someone came and opened the door and asked what we needed.  I told them that I was wondering if it was possible for my daughter to have a tour of the police station.  They were glad to show her all around.

Because of the way the person answered the door, I realized right away that they were in “lock down” mode because of the Murrah Building bombing.

My brother, who today is a U.S. Marine Colonel worked as the Executive Officer for the Marine Corps Recruiting office in the Murrah building in 1994.  I had visited his office a year earlier.  He left the previous June.  Greg’s replacement, who was a father of four children, just like my brother was killed that day.  The officer who first recruited my brother happened to be visiting that morning from Stillwater, was left blind.  My brother felt responsible for the officer’s death because he had encouraged him to take his place when he moved on.

Colonel Gregory T. Breazile

One of the first two friends I had when I went to College was Kirby Davis.  He worked as a journalist in the Journal Record building across the way from the Murrah Building.  I met him one day by accident in September 1996 when I was working in Oklahoma City for the electric company.  He was walking down the street during lunch.  I had just visited the memorial fence at the Murrah Building site.  I was still choked up by my visit to the fence when I saw him walking from across the street.  I told my friend Mike Gibbs that I would see him later, I just saw an old friend of mine, and I wanted to go talk to him.

Memorial Fence at the site of the Murrah Building

I was surprised when I asked Kirby how he was doing and he replied that he was devastated.  I asked him what had happened and he told me that the day the Murrah Building was bombed, his entire life had been ruined.  At that point, I decided that even though my lunch hour was just about over Kirby needed to talk.  So, we found a bench in a small park by his office and for the next hour he explained to me what had happened.

Even though the Journal Record building had been damaged in the bombing, that wasn’t what had destroyed Kirby.  It was what happened in the aftermath.  Here is the short story of what he said to me.

After the bombing occurred, rescue teams came from all over the country to help clear the debris.  Kirby’s wife went to work at the Convention Center where they were housing the rescue workers to help serving them.  While she was there serving the rescue workers, she became romantically involved with one of the workers.  The result of this was that she divorced Kirby and moved away.

I walked with Kirby back to his office at the Journal Record and said goodbye to him and returned to work.  I continue to pray for Kirby and his family.  I ask that those of you who read my blog and are so inclined, please say a prayer for him as well.

As I mentiioned, tomorrow is the 20th anniversary of the Oklahoma City Bombing.  I think we should all take a moment to reflect on how in times of trouble like this, when evil seems to be having its way and tragedy is all around, God sends men like the trooper and Power Plant Guard Charlie Hangar.