Tom Brokaw: Lessons from 20 years of Oklahoma healing

We live in a world where terror has become a too familiar part of our vocabulary. The terror of 9/11, in which al-Qaeda's attacks on America launched the nation into three wars — against Iraq, Afghanistan and the Islamic State. Terror attacks throughout the Middle East and Asian sub-continent, so many of them Muslim against Muslim. Terror attacks by crazed jihadists in Paris, London, Brussels and Copenhagen.

Before all of that came the stunning homegrown terror attack in America's heartland on April 19, 1995, an act of violence so unexpected, catastrophic and irrational that at first it seemed it must have been a calamitous accident of some kind.

But, no, we quickly learned it was a deliberate murderous assault on a symbol of the U.S. government — the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City.

A building housing 20 federal agencies, including military recruiting offices, the Social Security Administration, the Drug Enforcement Administration, the Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms agency and a pre-school child care center. Murrah was a familiar outpost on the Oklahoma City landscape, a connection between the federal system in Washington and the hearty, get-'er-done tradition of Oklahoma. The attack made no sense that day and even less now, 20 years later.

By the time I arrived the morning after the attack to lead NBC News coverage of the disaster, Oklahoma was already working through its shock, grief and anger to save lives, comfort the bereaved and restore order to the chaos.

I was not surprised. I knew the state's history of creating a prosperous modern society out of the petroleum and agriculture riches of its windswept plains. The renaissance following the terrible penalties of the Great Depression. The fierce pride in its cowboy, wildcatter, Native American and shoulder-to-the-wheel culture of independence.

We'll never know for sure what Timothy McVeigh was thinking with his mad act, his American genocide, but we now know what Oklahoman City residents decided. They decided to rebuild and remember. They decided not to become embittered. They were determined to work harder at finding common cause. They were wounded, deeply wounded, but they chose to heal and not to succumb to their wounds.

They created a memorial and museum to the 168 men, women and children killed by the explosion, a place so elegant in its design no words can improve on the experience of simply standing on the site and remembering.

Oklahoma residents are known for not backing down from a fight in the political arena, on the gridiron, NBA courts or rodeo arenas, but in their reaction to the bombing they knew intuitively they would not find restoration in rage.

It was a time to show the world the healing qualities of faith, community, the rule of law, memory and a commitment to the future.

And in this current atmosphere, others would do well to take note.

Tom Brokaw served as NBC News anchor from 1982 to 2004.

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