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Rachel D’Oro

(c) ANCHORAGE DAILY NEWS

06/05/97

   Bennie Evans was working out at the Fort Richardson gym Tuesday afternoon when a television newscast announced Timothy McVeigh had been found guilty on all counts in the Oklahoma City bombing.

   ''Change the channel. Please,'' the 42-year-old retired soldier asked a gym employee, who obliged without knowing why. Evans doesn't readily tell people that he was on the fourth floor of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building when the bomb exploded that April morning two years ago. The blast killed 168 people and injured more than 500 others, including Evans, a supervisor in the Army recruitment office.

   He didn't watch the trial. The bombing upset him so much that he and his wife, Rhonda Evans, asked the military to move them to Alaska -- as far away as they could get. They've been here since January.

   ''I was just trying to put the whole thing behind me,'' he said.

   Wednesday, the day the punishment phase of McVeigh's trial began. ''I'm embarrassed to cry in front of people, and I never know when something will trigger that. In the Army, I was trained to be macho, to not show my emotions. Slowly but surely, though, I'm realizing it's OK.''

   Evans spent months in and out of the hospital, trying to heal his back and leg wounds and shake the image of a child who died at his feet, he said during a two-hour interview at the Fort Richardson apartment he shares with his wife, who works for the Army, and their three children.

   Evans, a Desert Storm veteran, focused on rebuilding his life, enrolling at the University of Alaska Anchorage, where he is earning a business administration degree. He avoided most conversations about the explosion that ripped away the wall right next to his office.

   All that changed Tuesday when the verdict was read. With so many people calling for McVeigh's death, Evans finally decided to speak up. The Christian man said killing isn't the answer, even though he still weeps when he talks about the physical and emotional scars McVeigh inflicted. He'd rather see McVeigh in prison for life.

   Once socially active, he spends a lot of time alone, brooding. His back has thick welts of imbedded glass. He lost some short-term memory as a result of a head injury. His legs ache. When he sees a rattle in his 21/2-year-old daughter's hand, the image of an anonymous child's severed hand still grasping a rattle slams into his mind's eye.

   The tears come when he talks about the eight people he knew who died in the recruiting office, among them a smiling little girl whose face will always haunt him.

   But Evans doesn't hate McVeigh, he said. He feels vindicated by the verdict.

   ''Life is so valuable, even his,'' he said. ''His crime was caused by hate, and killing him would nurture the hate. There's too much hate in our society. And this hate has to stop somewhere.''

   He is convinced that McVeigh didn't act alone.

   ''Later on, he might talk about the others,'' Evans said. ''If he dies, he might become a martyr to whoever these people are, these people who knew there were kids in that building. McVeigh killed 168 people, yes, but he couldn't have done it by himself.''

   For Evans, April 19, 1995, is more clear today than in the days that followed the explosion, when reality was clouded by pain and shock. At the time, Evans was living in Oklahoma City, a five-hour drive from Fort Hood in Killeen, Texas, where Rhonda was stationed.

   That morning, Evans went to work, still trying to cope with his mother's diabetes-related death a month earlier. A new recruiter scheduled to start the next month came in, bringing his wife and two kids to meet Evans and the other employees. Evans and the new worker's 31/2-year-old daughter, Kayla Haddock-Titsworth, hit it off immediately.

   The two were playing near his desk at 9:02 a.m., Evans' back to the window, when the bomb went off. Evans was knocked unconscious for 40 minutes by a falling beam. When he came to, he heard moans and screams and saw little more than blood and rubble.

   Ignoring his own shredded back and legs, Evans helped pull survivors out of the debris, leading at least five people to safety. One of those survivors was Kayla's distraught mother. He still hears her frantic voice: ''You've got to find my baby.''

   As he helped carry people out, Evans searched frantically for Kayla. Then his foot hit Kayla's lifeless body. The rest of the child's family survived. Evans still blames himself for Kayla's death.

   ''If I hadn't told her father to come in that morning, she would still be alive,'' he said, putting his face in his hands. ''She was a real sweet kid.'' He also credits her with saving his life. If he hadn't been playing with her, he would have been at his desk, facing the window.

   Evans doesn't know how many hours he stayed at the bombed building that day. He remembers using someone's cellular phone to call his wife in Texas and to leave a message with her sister. He remembers going to the hospital, only to call a cab and leave before his wounds were cleaned. He knew bombing victims were crowding the hospitals and he figured he could take care of himself.

   His wife, now a staff sergeant at Fort Richardson, remembers her husband's determination during his rehabilitation. He refused to use a cane or stay in a wheelchair. He would lift himself from the wheelchair, only to fall over. To this day, he still fights his injuries, running four miles and lifting weights every day.

   But Rhonda Evans said her husband still flinches at sudden noises. So she rushes to answer the phone and has learned to wake up without an alarm clock. She makes sure their toddler doesn't bang pots and pans together.

   At first, Rhonda Evans disagreed with her husband about the best punishment for McVeigh. She wanted the one responsible for changing her family to die. Then she changed her mind, convinced Evans was right -- after all, he was the one who experienced the blast.

   ''I listened to him because he was there,'' she said. ''Now I think McVeigh should be incarcerated for life. Prisoners have a way of dealing with certain prisoners. Let McVeigh suffer in prison. And if something happens to him there, it's not on my shoulders.''

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