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WILKES-BARRE &mdash; It&rsquo;s been 25 years since Timothy McVeigh&rsquo;s evil act in Oklahoma City.
				On April 19, 1995, McVeigh&rsquo;s truck bomb ripped through the Murrah Building, killing 168 people.
				Sadly, the 25th anniversary ceremony was canceled due to the coronavirus restrictions.
				In 1997, I visited my friend Leeland Alexander, who lives in Tulsa. Leeland and I were classmates in Leadership USA in 1995-96, and we have remained fiends since.
				Leeland and I visited the Murrah Building site, and then we trekked all the way to Commerce, to visit the childhood home of Yankee legend Mickey Mantle. It was a day filled with emotion.
				Visiting the bombing site, the first thing we noticed was &ldquo;the tree&rdquo; &mdash; now known as &ldquo;The Survivor Tree.&rdquo; It stood green and proud amid broken windows, fallen walls and emptiness &mdash; all caused by that bomb, Timothy McVeigh&rsquo;s bomb.
				The tree stands across the street from where the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building once stood until McVeigh pulled a Ryder truck in front, set the timer on the bomb and walked away to his getaway car.
				As McVeigh drove away, happy in his thoughts, he must have heard the bomb go off; he had to know what he had just done.
				And what he did is impossible to comprehend, much less understand, until you visit the site in Oklahoma City. Only then do you really know the extent of McVeigh&rsquo;s evil.
				For two blocks to the left, the right, and across the street, there is devastation. Sidewalks and structures hold the scars of that April, 19, 1995 blast. Some 25 buildings were lost along with 168 lives. What remained was nothing, really. Boarded up windows, smashed glass, fallen bricks and mortar, shattered families and a devastated morale of a once-proud city.
				And that American elm tree.
				With all the devastation and damage in every direction, the tree survived.
				Tacked to the tree was a poem entitled, &ldquo;What Did You See?&rdquo; It tells of what happened that day &mdash; the noise, the devastation, the screams, the crying, the pain, the suffering, the helplessness of the situation. And it talked of how the tree, like society, survived.
				Oklahoma City has survived as well, and it will forever remember what was lost, and from there a rebuilding program began. It wasn&rsquo;t just be a rebuilding program of bricks and mortar, but of spirit and pride as well. Timothy McVeigh&rsquo;s bomb reached farther than most realized.
				A 15 year-old Oklahoma City girl wrote the poem and placed it on the tree. Why the tree lived through the blast is hard to explain. But it now stands in mockery of McVeigh. The tree has become the symbol of what he could not kill &mdash; the survivors, the families, the country, and the memories of the victims themselves.
				No matter how many television accounts you have watched, no matter how many newspaper reports you have read, you can never comprehend the extent of damage that had been done.
				In front of where the Murrah Building once stood, there was a section of Fifth Street where the hole made by McVeigh&rsquo;s bomb had been recently paved. It measured the size of a football field and was around 20-feet deep. Think about that and you can begin to realize the extent of the bomb&rsquo;s damage.
				The hole is not more than 100 feet from the tree. Yet the tree remains.
				Winston Churchill, in a speech before the House of Commons in 1944, said, &ldquo;Not in vain may be the pride of those who have survived the epitaph of those who fell.&rdquo; This holds true for Oklahoma City to this day.
				The innocent lives that were lost will forever remind us of what happened that day, and we will never forget. And the tree that survived will tell us that life, indeed, does go on, and we will build from there.
				I touched that tree. I prayed at the fence. I saw the devastation and experienced the mood. I don&rsquo;t know what it was like to be in Oklahoma City the day of the bombing. Let&rsquo;s hope none of us ever will.
				But, especially in these pandemic days, we all can draw strength from &ldquo;the tree&rdquo; and what its survival means.

Beyond the Byline: Gaining strength from ‘The Tree’ in Oklahoma City