Oklahoma City bombing survivor fulfills vows made under rubble

Stuck under 10 feet of rubble from a destroyed federal building, Amy Downs was sure she was going to die.

As her throat burned and she heard screams, Downs reflected on her regrets: ignoring her health, never having children, and dropping out of college.

“In that moment, I’m realizing I’ve never lived,” Downs said.

But when firefighters rescued her six hours later on April 19, 1995, Downs breathed in fresh air and promised herself: “I’m never living my life the same.”

Thirty years since the Oklahoma City bombing that killed 168 people, Downs, 58, has fulfilled that promise.

She has a 25-year-old son. She has competed in marathons and a triathlon, losing nearly 200 pounds along the way. She has a master’s in business administration. And she has built a career as a speaker and an author, hoping her story will convince others that some good can come from devastating events.

“I’m living on borrowed time,” Downs said during a phone interview. “And I have this opportunity that not everybody got, and I want to make the most of it.”

At the time of the bombing, Downs was a 28-year-old loan officer for a financial company that was then called Federal Employees Credit Union, which was in the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City.

Downs weighed more than 350 pounds and stopped for a dozen glazed doughnut holes at a boutique shop before work most mornings. She said she rarely saw friends and family because she was insecure about her appearance. Her hobbies included eating and watching TV.

Downs went to work April 19, 1995, on what was a sunny and cool morning and sat at her third-floor desk next to a window overlooking the city. Her colleague Robbin Huff, who was sitting next to her, began asking Downs a question when they heard a loud popping noise at 9:02 a.m.

Downs said she heard screaming but soon realized they were her own screams. When she opened her eyes, all she saw was black. She felt hot and struggled to breathe. She was still in her desk chair but couldn’t move. She thought she might be dead; she speculated that the credit union had been robbed and that she had been shot in the back of the head.

But about 45 minutes later, Downs said, she heard first responders above her picking through the debris.

Downs said she prayed for “a second chance,” telling herself that she would live a more fulfilling life if she survived. She tried quoting Bible passages, but all she could remember was “I walk through the valley of the shadow of death.” She recited songs that she sang growing up in church in Shreveport, La.

Firefighters eventually set Downs free and placed her on a gurney. She said she was taken to the University of Oklahoma Medical Center, with her right leg slashed near the knee and cuts from glass all over her body.

Downs would learn that Timothy McVeigh, a veteran who resented the federal government, set off a roughly 5,000-pound truck bomb made from agricultural fertilizer, racing fuel, and other components. The bomb destroyed more than one-third of the Murrah building.

Downs didn’t immediately fulfill her promise to improve her life.

She experienced survivor’s guilt, thinking that Huff, who died at 37, might have survived had Downs spoken to her earlier or not gone to her desk at that exact time. When she saw family members of victims, Downs said, she asked herself why they had died and she had survived. She went to counseling after initially resisting treatment.

Downs continued to work for the credit union, where the leadership aimed to reinvent the organization after having lost so many employees and the office. That made Downs wonder how she could reinvent herself.

“If you had a magic wand, what would you do?” Downs recalled asking herself.

Downs became pregnant and had her son, Austin Petty, in December 1999 with her now ex-husband.

McVeigh, who was convicted of 11 counts of murder and other charges, died by lethal injection in June 2001. Around the same time, Downs said, she began to move past her trauma.

She enrolled at Southern Nazarene University in Bethany, Okla., where she earned a bachelor’s degree in organizational leadership in 2006 and an MBA in 2009.

In 2008, Downs underwent gastric sleeve surgery to remove a portion of her stomach and lose about 75 pounds. She joined a gym despite all the mirrors there initially intimidating her. When she picked up biking in 2009 at her sister’s suggestion, Downs said, she lasted five minutes on a cruiser bike but progressively improved.

In April 2009, Downs distributed medals at the finish line of the Oklahoma City Memorial Marathon. That inspired her to run the following year in honor of her late best friend at work, Sonja Sanders, who died in the bombing at age 27.

Downs, who had shed about 100 pounds by that point, could fit into restaurant booths and bend over to tie her shoes for the first time in decades. She was confident she could run, too.

During her first run in January 2010, at Lake Hefner, she said, she was breathing heavily after about 10 seconds. She kept training, and she finished the half-marathon in April 2010. Two years later, she completed the marathon.

She kept biking, too, and for her 45th birthday, Downs aimed to ride 45 miles through a wilderness refuge. While organizing the event, she met a biker familiar with the area, Terry Head. They cycled together a few times, started dating, and married in 2013. To celebrate, they rode around downtown Oklahoma City with “Bride” and “Groom” signs on the front of their bikes.

In November 2017, Downs combined her hobbies in Tempe, Ariz., in a triathlon, which involves a 2.4-mile swim, a 112-mile bike ride, and a 26.2-mile run. Downs was one of the last finishers after competing for nearly 17 hours, but she said the competition was the culmination of her fitness journey to that point.

Downs continued working for the credit union, which changed its name to Allegiance and found a new office in Oklahoma City. She hired Sanders’s daughter, Savanna, in 2013 and became the credit union’s chief executive in 2017. She shared her story of surviving the bombing with new hires.

Downs, who retired last month, still carries baggage from the bombing. There’s a scar below her right knee from her leg injury. She’s scared of heights since falling three floors three decades ago, and she struggles to fly on planes or look out from the top of a mountain range she lives near in Medicine Park, Okla. She becomes anxious in large crowds, worried another mass casualty event could happen.

She said she still grapples with the balance between feeling devastated about the 1995 event but thankful for the life she has since built. Downs recently planted a seedling in her front yard from an American elm tree that survived the bombing to remember the victims of the deadliest act of homegrown terrorism in U.S. history.

“I would trade all the wonderful things in a heartbeat if it brought those lives back,” Downs said. “But it didn’t work that way. Bad things happen, but depending on the choices we make and how we move forward, we might find that the journey and path takes us to an amazing place.”