Caye Allen put her bagel in the office microwave just after 9 a.m. on April 19, 1995. It had been a hectic morning in the Allens’ house  getting six kids ready for the day was chaos, as it always was.  Caye and her husband, Ted Allen, drove together to work in Oklahoma City, as they often did. She dropped Ted off at the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building, where he worked as an urban planner for the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. Ted kissed her goodbye and told her he loved her, as he always did. At the U.S. attorney’s office in the Oklahoma Tower, Caye stood at the microwave as an explosion in the Murrah building, just a few blocks down the street, rocked downtown Oklahoma City. From the fourth floor, Caye couldn’t tell what happened. Her coworkers thought the blast might have come from the nearby courthouse. She remembered thinking, “Man, do I have a story to tell when I get home.” Caye and a friend walked down Harvey Avenue to the site of the blast. The ground was covered in glass, debris, paper  and the bagel Caye quickly cast aside.  It was eerily silent, she said, until alarms began to sound. They echoed off the high-rise downtown buildings, reverberating in her head. Police wouldn’t let onlookers see the back of the building, where the bomb had detonated, because it was too hot. Nearby cars were ablaze. Around them, people sprang into action, helping the wounded away from the blast site.  “I thought, ‘OK, that would be (Ted’s) instinct.’ I knew in a heartbeat that’s what he’d be doing,” Caye said. “‘Or maybe he’s trapped in a stairway because he was on the eighth floor,’ and so I thought maybe he’s trapped in a stairway. “I had hope.” Caye spent the rest of the day in a holding area in the basement of a hospital and then in a church, waiting for news of Ted.  No news came.  “I thought, ‘OK, he’s hurt, but they’ll get to him,’” Caye said. “I told myself to stay sane, that everything was going to be OK.” When she arrived home around 10:30 p.m., Caye finally saw the damage to the back of the Murrah building on the evening news. “Once I saw that, I knew,” Caye said. Ted’s office was in the rubble. “I never said a word to the kids and never said a word to anybody because I wanted everybody to keep hope,” Caye said, her voice breaking. “You just never know. I wanted everybody to keep hope.” Caye, however, had lost all hope. After a week, the Allen family was notified that Ted had died in the blast.  Caye knew 45 people who died that day.  ‘He loved seeing them happy’ Caye and Ted met on their first day working for the Department of Housing and Urban Development a decade before the bombing when they were both married to other people. Every day, the two carpooled with three others from Norman to work in Oklahoma City. They both eventually left HUD and didn’t see each other for over five years. Then Caye and Ted, both divorced, reconnected at a New Year’s Eve party and began dating soon after. The couple married in 1989 and joined their five children — Spencer, Jill, Gretchen, Meghan and Rachel — into one family. They had a son, Austin Allen, together in 1990.

Ted was the “ultimate dad,” Caye said, who coached kids’ sports and was a remarkably caring man. He loved to laugh at himself and had no ego, she said.  Ted worked as a city planner in Moore before returning to HUD. He was passionate about affordable housing and helping people who experience homelessness, Caye said. The couple worked together to find places for people to stay when the weather was bad and shelters were full, with Ted calling around on one phone and Caye on another.  “He helped people, and he enjoyed the result,” Caye said. “He loved seeing them happy.”  Their youngest child, Austin, was 4 when Ted died. Caye told him what happened to his dad a few days after the bombing, but it was hard for him to understand.  The day of the funeral, when they were supposed to be leaving for the church, Caye couldn’t find Austin. She walked into his room and found him lying on his bed in his formal black suit. “I said, ‘What are you doing? Let’s go,’” Caye said. “And he said, ‘I’m showing dad my suit, and I have to lay down or he can’t see how good it looks.’ “30 years later, I can’t even talk about it,” she said through tears. “It was huge. He was 4, he really didn’t even understand death.” While his memories are few, Austin remembers the house was full of people in the weeks following the bombing, which made him feel loved. Over 1,000 people attended Ted’s funeral. Austin said the community support continued as he grew up, and teachers treated him with extra care and tenderness.  “It’s in the midst of tragedy, but we’ve had a lot of good people around us,” Austin said. 

Caye said friends and neighbors delivered lots of food, mowed their yard and decorated their mailbox with yellow ribbon, which became a symbol for remembering victims of the bombing. The family received letters from around the world and cards from elementary schools, and the kids’ friends would sleep over every night so they wouldn’t be alone. “It restored my faith in humanity,” Caye said. Losing Ted made Caye a more forgiving parent, she said, because she learned the arguments and rules she used to be strict about wouldn’t matter the next day. “I used to tell them, ‘Don’t get mad about it now,’” Caye said. “‘You can wake up tomorrow and your life has changed forever. Don’t let little things like this get in your way of happiness.’” Caye said her family decided they weren’t going to live as bombing victims or let the actions of Timothy McVeigh, the man convicted and executed for orchestrating the bombing, destroy them. After the bombing, Caye continued to work in the civil division of the U.S. attorney’s office while the criminal division prosecuted McVeigh. The prosecution was dedicated to carrying out justice and did incredible work, Caye said.  Later, Caye met Oklahoma State Trooper Charlie Hanger, who had pulled McVeigh over on Interstate 35 in Noble County for not having a license plate. Hanger discovered McVeigh had an unregistered gun hidden under his jacket and arrested him, which led to the FBI identifying him as a suspect a few days later. Caye said she sees Hanger as a hero.  “We weren’t going to let Tim McVeigh ruin our life,” Caye said. “He ruined 168 — I’m just not letting him ruin mine, too. That’s what he wanted, he doesn’t deserve that. He’s not worth my time.” Losing his dad taught Austin that life is short and can end at any moment. He said experiencing that tragedy made him stronger.  With financial aid from the Oklahoma City Community Foundation, all six of the Allen kids graduated college. Caye said their college admissions would have been a big deal to Ted because he was the first person in his family to graduate college.  Austin graduated from Norman High School and went to OU. Thirty years after the bombing, Austin is 34 and a realtor. He and his wife, Marissa, live in Norman and have a son, Avery, and daughter, Sadie. Avery turned 4 in September. This anniversary is especially emotional for Austin. He said he has been anticipating for years how hard it would be to see his own son at 4 years old — the same age he was when his dad died. As Austin thinks about his son, he sees his dad’s death from another perspective.  “What if I just didn’t show up?” Austin said. “What if I was gone tomorrow? How would that impact Avery?” Austin said his bond with Avery is similar to how his relationship with his dad was, and he sees his 4-year-old self in Avery. Austin said he’s excited to watch Avery grow up and spend those years with him as a dad — years he didn’t get to spend with his own father.

Austin said he and his wife wrestle with how to tell Avery what happened to his grandfather. He wants to preserve his son’s innocence because he remembers how he lost his.  “He was 4 years old, and here he is, a grown man with a 4-year-old of his own,” Caye said. “You really realize how much time has passed and how much has happened.” Caye now has 12 grandchildren, which she said Ted would have loved to know. She said she hates he wasn’t there to walk any of his kids or grandkids down the aisle at their weddings. “I’ve had a wonderful life. I wish it hadn’t come out this way, the way it happened and everything,” Caye said. “But I’ve had a really good life.” Austin said he knows his dad would be proud of him.  “I would love to have my dad here, but at the same time, I wouldn’t change anything,” Austin said. “(I’m) super happy with my family, super happy with everything that I’ve accomplished.”  Ted loved his country, Caye said, and ultimately died for it.  “I want people to know my husband,” Caye said, “I want them to know Ted Allen, I don’t want them to know the 77th body they found that happened to be in the building that day.