Frank Lucas: “my grandparents' generation could tell you where they were when they heard the news that Wiley Post and Will Rogers had…”

“my grandparents' generation could tell you where they were when they heard the news that Wiley Post and Will Rogers had been lost in that plane crash in Alaska in 1935. They could also tell you exactly what they were doing when the news came of the bombing of Pearl Harbor in December of 1941. My parents, who were young men, kids at the time, could tell you exactly where they were when that same news about Pearl Harbor came. They could tell you exactly what they were doing when they discovered that President Kennedy had been assassinated. For my generation, there have been many things that imprint the mind that will mark the memory forever, but that day 31 years ago that took the lives of 168 of our fellow citizens is my equivalent to those earlier tragedies. I and the Oklahoma delegation were all together in Dallas-Fort Worth for a meeting of the Base Realignment and Closure Commission, BRAC, when the tragedy occurred at 9:02 a.m. I will never forget having a reporter from one of the Oklahoma City news radio stations tap me on the shoulder, and he said: Congressman, don't you have an office in the Federal Building? I said: Chris, I do, but there are three Federal buildings. Are you talking about Murrah, the Federal Courthouse, or the United States Post Office? He said: We have a report that there has been some kind of an explosion at the Federal Building in Oklahoma City, and it is gone.…”