Twelve years ago today I entered the staff break room at school to stunned faces and news on the television that a bomb had been set off outside a Federal Building in Oklahoma City. When I saw babies being taken out of the smoking ruins on television, all I could think about was getting home to my children. That day was one of the longest I could remember.

My husband worked in a Federal Building in Bethesda but my children were in a church preschool, not one associated with my husband’s workplace. Nevertheless, I needed to hold them.

After the bombing, Dan Bern wrote the following song.