"At first, it's so incredible, both of these, that you just can't get your arms around it. Once I realized what had happened and how many people had been killed and harmed, that's when the emotion of it came to me." Richard L. Bohanon, a longtime federal bankruptcy judge
"We chose not to live our lives in fear. It can happen anytime, anywhere, and we can't shut ourselves off from the world." Annie Bohanon
The first time, the judge was knocked from his chair.
He just missed getting hit by flying shards of glass from his shattered office windows as the truck bomb exploded a block away outside the Oklahoma City federal building.
The second time, he was in New York, close enough to feel the rumble as a World Trade Center tower collapsed a few blocks away.
He would flee around the devastation the plane hijackers wrought, along with thousands of others, walking through a fog of ash and soot that coated his skin and clothes white.
"Somehow, I was spared -- twice," said Richard L. Bohanon, a longtime federal bankruptcy judge.
"I was put in peril, but I was never harmed."
The Oklahoma City native recognizes he has a spot in history -- as an unwilling witness to the deadly terrorist attacks of April 19, 1995, and Sept. 11, 2001, the two worst on U.S. soil.
"At first, it's so incredible, both of these, that you just can't get your arms around it," he said. "Once I realized what had happened and how many people had been killed and harmed, that's when the emotion of it came to me."
Bohanon, 71, discussed his memories publicly for the first time last week at the urging of his wife, Annie, from his ninth-floor chambers overlooking the Oklahoma City National Memorial.
His wife recalled how she twice wondered whether she was a widow. She still is bothered sometimes at night.
"I have anxiety dreams that I don't know where Dick is and I can't find him," said Annie Bohanon, 59.
The judge was in both places because of work. "It was just an odd circumstance," he said.
The morning of April 19, 1995, he was in his chambers at the old Oklahoma City federal courthouse, on a phone call to congratulate a friend.
On Sept. 11, 2001, he was in Manhattan on temporary assignment, helping with a backlog of bankruptcy cases, something he did then for one or two weeks a month.
The judge and his wife described both tragedies matter-of-factly.
They did, though, offer one philosophical insight from their experiences.
"We chose not to live our lives in fear," Annie Bohanon said. "It can happen anytime, anywhere, and we can't shut ourselves off from the world."
They agreed to keep going to New York to help with bankruptcy cases there, until judicial vacancies were filled and he no longer was needed.
"That is a lesson," the judge said. "We're not going to let them do something to us. ... It doesn't accomplish anything."
The judge also offers one regret: He didn't get a chance to assist any victims.
The judge despises the terrorists -- executed Oklahoma City bomber Tim McVeigh and al-Qaida leader
Excerpts of an interview with Richard and Annie Bohanon
