Apr 25, 2004 By Christine Haines 5 min read

WASHINGTON – After Kenneth Thompson’s mother was killed in the April 19, 1995, Oklahoma City bombing, he made two promises to himself: that every day he would make his mother proud of him and that he would give back to those who had given so freely to him. “Most of us don’t choose how we’ll die, but we can choose how we live,” Thompson said.

Thompson, the keynote speaker for this year’s Crime Victims Rights Week program, sponsored by the Washington County district attorney’s office, has fulfilled those promises in part through his work with the National Memorial Institute for the Prevention of Terrorism. Thompson is the director of external affairs for the Oklahoma City-based organization, which works with law enforcement agencies, first responders and victims of terrorism and other violent crimes.

About 160 people attended Friday’s program, including law enforcement officers, court employees, social workers, mental health workers and school officials. He offered advice on how to handle disasters and how not to handle disasters. He also answered questions from the audience.

Thompson said that immediately after a disaster, the families of the victims are not ready to talk about their feelings.

“Mental health workers should not say, ‘I know how you feel.’ I don’t want people to feel what I feel,” Thompson said. “Most of the time, the best thing to say is nothing. Just be there for us.”

Thompson said the same is true regarding clergy, that it is not always comforting for a family member to be asked if they want to pray with a clergy person, especially if the individual was not particularly spiritual before the disaster.

He suggested that clergy and counselors wanting to help the families of victims simply be available to them, make sure they have food and water and access to information and to build a relationship that way before expecting the families to open up to them emotionally.

Thompson described his experiences on the day of the Oklahoma City bombing, saying that he knew as soon as he saw television images of the Alfred Murrah Federal Building that his mother was dead.

“I felt my mother was killed as soon as the helicopter showed the front of the building, because I knew where her office was. The hardest day of my life was when they told us they couldn’t get to her and there was a 50-percent chance that her body would never be recovered,” he said.

Thompson showed pictures of the bombing site and an image of him and his brother in helmets, hugging after placing flowers near the rubble burying his mother. He said he was grateful to the fire chief who permitted his family that act of closure. The site was then marked and covered with tarps before the rest of the unstable building was imploded. Thompson said that all of the bodies eventually were recovered from the site, and his mother’s was the last one removed and identified.

“Crime affects people. They’re not case numbers. It’s about human beings and our loss,” Thompson said as he showed a photo of his mother.

Thompson urged those in charge of crime and disaster scenes to be honest at all times with the victims’ families.

Officials need to be ready to deal with family members in a positive way, he added, because family members will do anything they need to do to connect with the missing victims. He said they will cross police lines, clog phone lines trying to reach loved ones and demand information. In Oklahoma City, officials always briefed family members on the status of the recovery operations before the media was briefed, so no relatives ever had to get information from the media.

He noted that officials must establish a plan that protects families from the media as they are dealing with their grief.

“The family members will seek the media out,” Thompson said.

Thompson pointed out that some victims of the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing are still receiving medical treatment, and 65 to 70 family members are still receiving mental-health care. It has been estimated that such care may be needed for as long as 15 more years.

Thompson was called upon by the American Red Cross to provide assistance to the families of victims in New York after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attack. Initially, he went with just one other person who lost a family member in Oklahoma City. Their work with victims’ families was so successful that Thompson assembled a team of 14 family members of Oklahoma City bombing victims to help New York families.

Thompson said having gone through a similar disaster gave the Oklahoma City families insight into the New York situation, but it did not make them immune to the strong emotions that accompany a disaster.

“In the first couple of hours we were there, we had to relive Oklahoma City,” he said.

Thompson regularly goes through mental-health evaluations in his position with the Red Cross. He said his personal relationship with Christ also helps him deal with the ongoing stresses of disaster scenes.