Sister Veronica Higgins is familiar with the Memorial Day fireworks at Engel Stadium in Chattanooga. But the first explosion from this year's show disturbed her as it boomed into her mother's home on East Tenth Street.

Sister Veronica teaches fourth grade in Oklahoma City, just eight blocks from the Murrah Federal Building that was bombed on April 19 in the worst terrorist attack in U.S. history. A Chattanooga native, Sister Veronica moved to Oklahoma city to join the Carmelite Sisters of St. Therese after graduating from UT Chattanooga in 1973.

"Twenty windows in our school were broken by the blast," she recalls. "We didn't know what had happened, so we filed outside and ended up looking straight into massive heaps of white, then black, billowing smoke."

In those first terrifying minutes, no one knew which building had been hit.

"The blast was so strong, it felt like our own convent had been bombed," Sister Veronica says. "Our little ones stood helpless, crying, worrying about their parents."

With reports circulating that other bombs were scheduled to go off, the teachers shep-herded the children to the convent basement. "Once we had over 100 kids in our basement, they were calm," Sister Veronica says.

Soon, parents started arriving to reassure their children that they were all right and to take them home for the day. None of the school children or staff lost relatives in the bombing that claimed almost 200 lives.

But the father of one of the Villa Teresa School second-graders was working on the seventh floor of the Murrah Building at the time of the blast. "He survived and helped pull other people out," Sister Veronica says.

In a quirk of fate, the father-in-law of the other fourth-grade teacher at the school worked at the Murrah Building but overslept on April 19.

On the way into town, he remembered leaving some papers at home, turned around and went back for them. The fortuitous delays kept him from arriving at work that day and possibly saved his life.

But everyone -- even those without friends or relatives in the building -- was affected by the attack.

"All we saw on television was blood and crying and exhausted rescue workers," Sister Veronica says. "We watched TV anchors break down on the air. It was three days before a commercial was broadcast on the Oklahoma City stations. It was such a relief to finally see an advertisement.

"But the saddest thing of all was the obituaries. Died Wednesday. Died Wednesday. Died Wednesday. They seemed to go on forever."

Sister Veronica knew two people who died in the buildingÑa former parent at her school and a 23-year-old member of the Catholic community who worked in the Social Security office in the Murrah Building.

A friend who worked in a building across the street survived the bombing but had to have 200 stitches in her back.

Nonetheless, the day after the bombing, the children at Villa Teresa were back in class. They didn't want to sit close to the windows and they talked about their fears.

"One boy said he didn't feel safe at home," says Sister Veronica. "He was always looking under his bed."

Then letters from children around the country started arriving to cheer the youngsters. "They wrote things like, 'We hope you're feeling better' and 'Our prayers are with you,' and one of them sent a drawing of God like Superman," says Sister Veronica.

Like many adults in the stricken city, Sister Veronica's children took comfort from comforting others. They wrote to bombing victims in hospitals and made them flower buttons. For those who lost their sight, the children made an audio tape of religious songs.

Sister Veronica sings and plays piano and guitar for churches in Oklahoma City, using talents she displayed at UTC as a member of Glenn Draper's Singing Mocs.

The 44-year-old Riverside High School graduate, who holds a bachelor's degree in English from UTC, also teaches music at Villa Teresa.

Sister Veronica's vocation has led her to more learning: a master's degree in special education from the University of Central Oklahoma and a master's degree in Christian spirituality from Creighton University in Omaha. She is the daughter of Alease Higgins, a retired schoolteacher, whom Sister Veronica visited in May.

Despite the horrors of the bombing, Sister Veronica's fourth graders showed their resiliency. The Friday after the blast, an FBI agent visited the class to ask the children if they had seen anything suspicious two day earlier.

The children had no information about the case, but they clearly touched him when they told the agent they were praying for him and all the hard work he had to do.

And there was a light moment when the federal investigator asked Sister Veronica if the different headgear indicated rank among the sisters. When she told him no, he said, "Well, it did in The Sound of Music."

"That's Hollywood," Sister Veronica replied.

It was two weeks before Sister Veronica went down to look at the Murrah Building. "It was like a pilgrimage," she says. "It was quiet and eerie, almost like a place of worship. I felt connected to people who hadn't completed their lives."

At the site Sister Veronica told a reporter for The 700 Club television program that she felt a resurrection was occurring through people caring and helping and not responding with hate.

"We seemed so connected to people from all over the nation," she says. "President Clinton took us on like he was a father to us. I sensed a real caring from Hillary and Clinton. It never once seemed political."

Every year the fourth graders at Villa Teresa make a gift to the school as they graduate. This year, following President Clinton's suggestion, they planted a dogwood tree in the prayer area of the Sisters of St. Therese convent as a memorial to the Murrah Building bombing victims.

"Evil is a reality," says Sister Veronica. "But you have to consider the response -- the good that has come out of the evil."

Complete Collapse

When the signal finally came to destroy the remains of the building, a UTK alumnus' company did the job.

Controlled Demolition Inc. collapsed the Murrah Building with less than 100 pounds of dynamite placed strategically at 200 points in the superstructure. The job was typical of the delicate, dangerous work Mark Loizeaux (Knoxville '71), his brother Doug, and their father, John D., do. The company is headquartered in Phoenix, Maryland.

The federal building demolition was more dangerous than most of Controlled Demolition's jobs because the remains were so unstable. The company's workers partially rebuilt some areas of the building to help con-trol the collapse. And unlike the April 19 bomb blast that shattered windows a mile away, the demolition operation barely vibrated nearby buildings.

John D. founded CDI in the late 1940s. In 1960, at age 11, Mark began learning the business from his father and eight years later became the nation's youngest blaster.

When John D. was injured in an accident, 18-year-old Mark interrupted his pursuit of an architecture degree at UTK and returned home to run the family business. After his father recovered, Mark re-enrolled, this time majoring in business. Soon after he graduated, he became president of CDI.

Mark supervises the company's contracts, insurance, and engineering and takes charge of some field operations. His brother, Doug, is vice president responsible for field operations and personnel. He personally packed explosives in the Oklahoma City federal building.

Stacey Loizeaux, Mark's daughter, is a licensed blaster and frequently a project manager. She was born in Knoxville while her dad attended UTK.

CDI has brought down many well known structures including the Dunes Hotel in Las Vegas and the Andrew Jackson in Nashville. The Sheikh A. Akakl Center in Saudi Arabia, part of which collapsed during construction, was another of CDI's big blows. A company brochure says CDI brought down the remainder of the building without damaging facilities just two feet away on two sides. -- Bob Gilbert

Tennessee Alumnus, Fall 1995