17th Anniversary Of OKC Bombing Thursday

Thursday will mark the 17th anniversary of the bombing of the Murrah Building in downtown Oklahoma City.

April 19, 1995 changed the nation forever, but perhaps no one more so than the loved ones of the 168 people lost. 

Murrah Building Bombing Timeline

A remembrance ceremony will be held at the Oklahoma City National Memorial on that day. It will last about an hour and again include a moment of silence at 9:02 a.m. to remember the violence that happened there and the lives that were lost.

Seventeen years ago, Cynthia Brown had just accepted her first Secret Service assignment in Oklahoma City.

"Oklahoma City, that's a pretty safe place to be," Brown's brother Ray Campbell remembers thinking.  "Turned out it wasn't so."

Julia Welch was working as an interpreter for the Social Security Administration.

"I could see the hole in that building missing and I frankly gave up all hope at that point," her father Bud said.

Both were killed on April 19, 1995.

"When your children die, you bury them in your heart and it's forever," said Welch.  "It just never goes away."

Tomorrow,  Cynthia, Julia and 166 others will be remembered on the anniversary of the attacks. Bud, says he'll be here in a seat somewhere in the back. But Cynthia's family won't.  For them 17 years still isn't long enough to heal the pain.

"I think you just learn to deal with it better over the years,"  said Campbell.

That's why Cynthia's family is here April 18.  For both families, these grounds hold something sacred that time will never change.

"I still to this day, when I walk on this ground I get cold chills and I wonder, what happened here?  What really happened here?" said Cynthia's mother Linda Campbell.

The ceremony will begin tomorrow at 8:55 a.m.