Oklahoma Bombing Survivor Sets Sights on Ph.D.

April 19, 1995, is a day most Americans may forget. But for Howard University graduate student Dion Thomas, it’s a day forever etched in her memory. That Wednesday morning the sky was a clear blue in Oklahoma City but it would end in an unimaginable tragedy when Timothy J. McVeigh set off a bomb blast that took 168 lives. Thomas’s mother was one of them.

“I was really angry, and had a lot of hate toward him in the beginning,” Thomas said of McVeigh. “I wish they would not have killed him because it wasn’t going to bring my mom back. It was like an easy way out. If I was older at the time I would have tried to fight against him receiving the death penalty. He should have lived with what he did.”

Thomas was 15-years-old when her mother died. The death of her mother deeply wounded her father emotionally which left him mentally unstable.

“I just remember a lot of confusion; no one knew what really happened,” Thomas recalled, taking in a deep breath.

A devastated Thomas remembers crying a lot after getting the news from her mother’s brother, Cornelius Lewis, who came to her school to tell her about the bombing in the building where her mother had worked for almost 20 years in the security office on the first floor.

“We kind of knew from where her office was that it wasn’t good, but I was trying to remain hopeful,” she said. “I just kept praying.”

But four days later, the Red Cross called her family after identifying her mother’s body. Her family was torn to pieces, especially her father whose wife of 25 years was gone without so much as a goodbye.

“She was like an angel on Earth,” Thomas said, describing her mother. “She was just that type of person, always humorous. She had a beautiful smile and was honest and trustworthy; we were very close, we had a best friend relationship.”

Things began to spiral downward after the death of her mother. Thomas, a straight A-student, lost the focus she once had and began missing weeks of school.

“She was always a very smart child, she had no problems until after her mother passed,” said Bettie Lewis, Thomas’ grandmother.

Lewis who was always strong about the death of her daughter tried to remain even stronger for her grandchildren. She took care of Thomas, who lived with her after the tragedy until Thomas graduated from North West Classen High School in 1997 with barely a 2.0 grade point average after switching schools twice.

Finding a way to get back on track was difficult.

“It changed my life so drastically. I wasn’t doing anything with it,” said Thomas who floated from job to job at such places like fast food restaurants and Foot Locker after graduating.

After a year floating aimlessly, Thomas’ Uncle Cornelius Lewis and other family members suggested Thomas enroll in the Army. To avoid being called to fight in a war, her uncle advised her to train to become a veterinary technician. Thomas enrolled in October 1998 and served in the Army for a couple of years doing research, caring for military pets, and even venturing overseas to Bahrain, the smallest country in Arab Middle East, where she worked in the veterinary clinic.

She came back to the United States in 2001, just a few days before the 9/11 attacks to work at her second duty station, Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, where she worked for two years. She finished her duty to the Army in 2003.

“I really enjoyed learning and meeting new people,” she said. “The experience helped diversify me because in Oklahoma everyone is the same. Being away from home helped me grow as a person.”

In 2003, Thomas attended the Howard Homecoming with her friends in the military who decided to see what all the excitement was about the events. A speech pathologist she had met in the Army had talked to her about speech pathology as a career. Her experience at the Howard Homecoming convinced her Howard would be the college to pursue a speech pathology major. In 2004, she enrolled.

“I had never even heard of a job like that before. I’ve always wanted to help people,” said Thomas, which made assisting children or adults with communication disorders the perfect career for her.

Survivors Education Fund, an organization dedicated to assisting people who lost parents in the Oklahoma City bombing attack pursue academic degrees, paid her tuition and living expenses.

During her undergraduate journey at Howard, she met Courtney Wilkes who was also studying communication sciences and disorders. They became close friends.

“When I met her we made an instant connection because we had a Southern connection,” Wilkes, a Florida native, said of her friend.

Wilkes describes Thomas as a giving person with a big heart. “She had this motherly kind of way about her. Just how she would look after me and make sure I was doing what I was supposed to made me look up to her.”

Thomas remained silent about her story to her friends. “She didn’t tell me her story until the end of our first year in undergraduate school,” Wilkes said. “After that I looked at her totally different because she came to D.C. to better herself even through all of her trials and obstacles. My respect level for her was out of this world after hearing her story. It was amazing.”

Thomas graduated from Howard in 2007 with a degree in speech pathology.

“It was one of my greatest achievements. My family was so proud to see that I was following in my mom’s footsteps,” she said.