\n<\/p>\n
David Glover holds up what looks like a pair of gray bricks. They were once part of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, which was bombed by Timothy McVeigh on April 19, 1995, killing 168 people. It remains the deadliest domestic terror attack in U.S. history.<\/p>\n
Glover, an executive producer of the new three-part docuseries \u201cOklahoma City Bombing: One Day in America,\u201d explained in a video interview that he had received the rubble from Mike Shannon, a firefighter featured in the film. Shannon wanted the filmmaker to feel the weight of the project in his hands.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was almost like he was saying, \u2018Don\u2019t forget this is real,\u2019\u201d Glover said. \u201c\u2018Don\u2019t forget you\u2019ve got a responsibility here.\u2019 It is a physical artifact that has a lot of heft to it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Shannon needn\u2019t have worried. The series, now streaming on Hulu and Disney+, follows a pattern set by the first two \u201cOne Day in America\u201d installments, which covered the Sept. 11 attacks and the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. The stories are less interested in granules of policy and the sweep of history than in the experiences of individuals who were present for events that shook the country. (Glover is an executive producer on all of the \u201cOne Day in America\u201d series, which were produced by 72 Films, the company he founded with Mark Raphael.)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
This approach means that McVeigh, the violent anti-government extremist who bombed the Murrah building (and was executed in 2001), takes a back seat to the Oklahomans whose lives were shattered that day, many of whom appear here to give their accounts of the shock and its aftermath. This includes emergency medical workers, victims, family members, law enforcement officers and even McVeigh\u2019s court-appointed attorney, who admits to fearing for his life when he learned the identity of his new client.<\/p>\n
Even the more famous and consequential interview subjects approach the day\u2019s events from a personal perspective. Bill Clinton, who was in the first term of his presidency when the attack occurred (and was in the middle of a White House news conference on terrorism when he was notified about it), lost one of his favorite Secret Service agents in the bombing.<\/p>\n
\u201cI wanted to scream,\u201d Clinton says in the series. \u201cThen I said, \u2018No, you can\u2019t do that. You don\u2019t get to scream.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
Ceri Isfryn, who directed the docuseries, was also struck by what happened after their interview. \u201cHe said at the end of it that we\u2019d asked him questions he\u2019d never been asked before, which was surprising to me,\u201d she said, sitting beside Glover in a video interview. \u201cThere\u2019s something about asking people to almost freeze time in really specific moments that gives for a different and more vulnerable interview.\u201d<\/p>\n
Clinton wasn\u2019t the only person who gained new insight through interviews with the filmmaking team.<\/p>\n
At the time of the bombing, Amy Downs was a 28-year-old staff member at Federal Employees Credit Union, which lost 18 of its 33 employees in the attack. As she recalls in the series, she was trapped upside down in her office chair as firefighters dug through the rubble for survivors.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
Shannon, the same fireman who gave the filmmakers chunks of the building, heard her crying for help. In the series, Shannon recalls how bad he felt after another bomb scare forced an evacuation of the building and he had to leave Downs pleading for assistance (she was rescued when firefighters were allowed back in).<\/p>\n
In an interview, Downs, who eventually became chief executive of the resurrected credit union (renamed Allegiance Credit Union), said she was never aware of Shannon\u2019s internal conflict until she saw the documentary footage and Shannon\u2019s interview.<\/p>\n
\u201cI had forgotten about begging Mike Shannon to stay, and I didn\u2019t know about the battle that he had not wanting to leave,\u201d Downs said. \u201cI didn\u2019t put myself in his shoes. I hate that I made him feel the way I did.\u201d<\/p>\n
She said she had weighed more at the time of the explosion and that fact, surprisingly, was probably what allowed her to stay in her chair as it hung upside down. The experience of surviving the trauma of the bombing inspired her to go back to school, first for a bachelor\u2019s degree in organizational leadership, and then for an MBA.<\/p>\n
Much of the footage in the series came from a single source: Oklahoma City-based KWTV News 9, which opened up its rushes to the \u201cOne Day in America\u201d team. The startlingly immediate images are accompanied by newly recorded witness narration that describes what is onscreen.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
The station also provided the series one of its most compelling interview subjects.<\/p>\n
Robin Marsh had started working at KWTV just nine days before the bombing. At 9:01 a.m. that day she was in a meeting to prepare for her afternoon news anchor job when a colleague entered the news director\u2019s office. The assistant fire chief had called to say there had been an explosion downtown.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
\u201cAnd then our building shook like there had been an earthquake,\u201d Marsh said in an interview. \u201cWe were about 10 miles away. We knew immediately that something catastrophic had happened.\u201d<\/p>\n
The footage from that day provides an extraordinary look at a newsroom jolted into action. We see the moment when the station staff members realize the importance of the date: April 19, 1995, two years from the day when the siege on the Branch Davidian compound outside Waco, Texas, ended in a deadly inferno (which McVeigh identified as a primary source of his anti-government rage). Viewers see Marsh walk onto the set of the live newscast with handwritten updates. And we see her running for cover, again live on the air, when that second bomb scare is announced.<\/p>\n
Marsh, who is still an anchor at the station \u2014 she also leads tours of the bombing memorial site \u2014 pointed out how differently big news was gathered and disseminated 30 years ago. The 24-hour news cycle was a fairly recent innovation. News 9 stayed on the air for 90 consecutive hours, from Wednesday to Sunday.<\/p>\n
\u201cDid I go home?\u201d Marsh said. \u201cYes. Did I rest? I\u2019m not sure.\u201d<\/p>\n
To Marsh, the \u201cOne Day in America\u201d series was made in the same spirit as the effort her station made to tell the story as intimately as possible.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt gives you a glimpse of heroism on a level that in some ways your mind can\u2019t comprehend,\u201d she said. \u201cThey let you hear from the people who were there. The spirit of the story is told so well.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n