Family creates a new norm after Oklahoma City bombing

That's the day her husband of 21 years, Michael D. Weaver, 45, was killed in the bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building.

That's the day their sons Jeff and Tim lost their father.

On Friday, Donna and Jeff Weaver, 31, spoke to about 100 people during the "First Person: Stories of Hope" speaker series at the Oklahoma City

National Memorial & Museum.

Mike and Donna met at the University of Oklahoma, where he was a member of Beta Theta Pi and graduated in 1972 with a Bachelor of Business Administration in Finance degree. In 1974, he received his law degree from Oklahoma City University. In the five years leading up to his death, Weaver served as an attorney for the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.

He and Donna loved to spend time together on the ski slopes, at the lake and at the fields and courts where Mike coached their two sons in baseball, basketball and soccer.

"The future was kind of this black hole, I didn't know what it was going to be," Donna said.

"We had to create a new norm and that norm was with three people.

"For example, we found that we couldn't sit at the table and eat, because there was an empty chair there. So, we made an adjustment, and we sat at the bar. We ate there for a long time."

On the morning of April 19, 1995, Mike had taken Donna's car in for some work. Jeff was a student at Edmond North High School, and Tim was at Sequoyah Middle School. Donna was working at Southwestern Bell Telephone. Her office was a short distance north of the bombing site.

Donna said that in the minutes immediately following 9:02 a.m., "Everything goes through your mind except that there's been a truck bomb down the street."

When she saw the Murrah Building, she hoped Mike was running late because of the work on the car.

But after making a few calls, she was told by her brother-in-law's secretary that Mike had already called his brother's office in Tulsa that morning. She kept hoping.

They weren't officially notified of Mike's death until April 22.

What she found right away was a swell of support: their family, their church family, schoolteachers and counselors, students, Mike's golf buddies, her co-workers, neighbors and on and on.

"It helped me to have people around," she said. "It helped me when the relatives came in. It helped me to have a full house."

If she needed something, someone was right there. But the support also allowed her time to be alone.

While others answered the phone or prepared meals, Donna sometimes stepped away.

"The other thing that really helped me a lot was prayer," she said. "It was one of the things that kept me going. It was a cathartic kind of thing to be able to pray my fears, to cry out, to do whatever I needed. And it sustained me for days and months, for a long time."

Jeff said the presence of friends also helped him. It wasn't necessarily what they said. It was the fact that they had come to be with him.

"There was really nothing that any of my friends could say to help me, but just being there was the support that I needed and that helped greatly," he said.

The norm was new. And the void left by Mike's death was tremendous. However, faith, friends and family assured Donna and sons that the new norm in ways was very familiar.

"One morning we got up, and I think the senior high youth group had come overnight," Donna said. "They had written in chalk on our sidewalks, messages of encouragement.

"It was just such a wonderful thing; it lifted our spirits."