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 unimaginable tragedy when Timothy J. McVeigh set off a bomb that took 168 lives. Thomas’ mother was among them.
“I was really angry, and had a lot of hate toward him in the beginning,” Thomas said of McVeigh. “I wished they would not kill him because it wasn’t going to bring my mom back. If I were older at the time, I would have fought giving him the death penalty. He should have lived with what he did.”
Thomas was 15 when her mother, a 20-year security officer died, leaving her father deeply wounded emotionally and mentally unstable.
“I just remember a lot of confusion; no one knew what really happened,” Thomas recalled. “We knew from where her office was that it wasn’t good. But I just kept hopeful and praying.” Four days later, the Red Cross identified her body and called. The family was devastated.
“She was like an angel on Earth,” Thomas described her mother. “We were very close, we had a best-friend relationship.”
Things began to spiral downward for Thomas, who was a straight-A student. She lost focus and began missing school. “She was always a very smart child. She had no problems until after her mother passed,” said Bettie Lewis, Thomas’ grandmother.
Thomas moved in with Lewis, who took care of her until she graduated from high school in 1997, with barely a 2.0 grade point average after switching schools twice.
“It changed my life drastically. I wasn’t doing anything with it,” said Thomas who floated from job to job at fast food restaurants and Foot Locker after graduating.
After a year floating aimlessly, Thomas’ uncle Cornelius Lewis and other family members suggested she enroll in the Army. To avoid fighting in a war, her uncle advised Thomas to train to become a veterinary technician. She enrolled in October 1998 and served in the Army for a couple of years doing research and caring for military pets in Bahrain, the smallest Arab country in the Middle East.
In 2001 she returned to the states, and finished her duty to the Army at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in 2003.
“The experience helped diversify me because in Oklahoma everyone is the same. Being away from home helped me grow as a person,” said Thomas.
In 2003, she attended Howard University’s homecoming with some friends. A speech pathologist she had met in the Army had mentioned a career in pathology. “I had never even heard of a job like that before. But I had always wanted to help people,” said Thomas, which made assisting children or adults with communication disorders the perfect career for her.
Howard had a speech pathology major and in 2004, she enrolled in it.
Survivors Education Fund, an organization which assists people who lost parents in the Oklahoma City bombing attack pursue academic degrees, paid her tuition and living expenses.
At Howard, she met Courtney Wilkes who was also studying communication sciences and disorders. They became close friends.
“We made an instant connection because we had a Southern connection,” Wilkes, a Florida native, said of Thomas. “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 never told her story to Wilkes until the end of their first year. “After that, I looked at her totally different. She came to DC to better herself even through all of her trials and obstacles,” Wilkes said. “My respect for her zoomed out of this world after hearing her story.”
Thomas graduated in 2007 but returned to Howard for a Master’s degree two years later. Thomas expects to complete her degree in 2011. She will be 30, but plans to get a Ph.D. before returning to Oklahoma.
“I am really proud that she’s trying to go on and study and develop whatever she wants to be,” Lewis proudly said of her granddaughter. “She’ll be the only one in our family with a Master’s degree. I just want to keep her encouraged.”